Jeannot
Szwarc is, let’s be honest, something of a hack. Though a great director of television
including notable episodes of It Takes a Thief and Night Gallery,
his feature filmography including but not limited to such critically maligned
fare as Jaws 2 or Somewhere in Time tends to leave a bad taste in
one’s mouth. Before torpedoing his
career with the cataclysmic bomb Santa Claus: The Movie, the French born
producer-director tried his hand at the international spy genre at the height
of Cold War tensions with his promising but ultimately deflating dud Enigma.
Populated
by an overqualified cast featuring Martin Sheen, Brigitte Fossey, Sam Neill,
Warren Clarke and even Derek Jacobi, the film starts out as a traditional spy
thriller before becoming a triangular romantic drama with the female lead
caught between sides of the political fence.
The premise could make for a compelling picture capitalizing on the Cold
War which all of Hollywood seemed to take a stab at in films made around that
period. In Szwarc’s hands, the cast is
wasted and it all comes across as rather silly.
Think of the cornball setup of Jake Speed played straight and
you’ve a rough idea of what this is like.
Alex
Holbeck (Martin Sheen) is an East German spy hiding out in Paris. Tracked down by the CIA, he is enlisted to
infiltrate an East Berlin computer lab to retrieve an Enigma code scrambler
with the hopes of thwarting the assassination of five Russians. Trouble is the East German police and the KGB
are aware of Holbeck’s ruse and it becomes a chase thriller before blossoming
into a frankly ludicrous love triangle involving Holbeck’s on/off girlfriend
Karen (Brigitte Fossey) and head KGB officer Dimitri (Sam Neill) whom she
seduces to extract information.
Dated
and implausible, Enigma based upon the novel by Michael Barak and
adapted by Academy Award winning screenwriter John Briley has the blueprint of
a sweeping historical romantic epic spoken of the same breath as David
Lean. In Szwarc’s hands, however, it’s
forgettable and often dismal tripe.
Martin Sheen does a lot of physical acting for the part and Sam Neill
gives his KGB officer a soft side counterpointed by his penchant for
brutality. The one with the most
heavy-lifting to do is Fossey who strips naked at the hands of ruthless prison guards,
beds both leading male characters and has to keep her head up amid the growing
web of jealousies.
Opening
to middling reviews and less-than-poor box office returns against a roughly $8
million budget, Enigma floundered before dying a quiet death. In the years since, Szwarc would continue to
scrape the bottom of the financial barrel with Supergirl before
unleashing the aforementioned Christmas movie horror on unsuspecting
moviegoers.
Looking back at the recently
revived blu-ray edition released by MVD Marquee Collection, Enigma is a
testament to how much a potentially strong screenplay and an even stronger cast
can be squandered by the wrong pair of hands.
Enigma aspires to be an international romantic epic but when you
have the director of Jaws 2 you’re likely going to get the artistic
equivalent of a Cannon Film in its place.
--Andrew Kotwicki
