Grade: B

Verdict: An intriguing and intricate British World War II thriller.

Details: Starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet and Jeremy Northam. Directed by Michael Apted. Rated R for language, brief nudity and wartime atrocities. One hour, 57 minutes.

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Review: Kate Winslet is a consummate character actress who just happens to look like a movie star. She proves this yet again in “Enigma,” a complicated and intelligent British film with a curious roster of off-screen talent. The director is Michael Apted, whose varied career encompasses everything from the celebrated "7/14/21 Up" documentaries to “The World Is Not Enough.” The writer is Tom Stoppard, the high-minded playwright (''The Invention of Love") and screenwriter (“Shakespeare in Love”). And the producer is Mick Jagger.

“Enigma” is a period piece set in England during World War II. At Bletchley Park, about 60 miles north of London, a bevy of Britain's most beautiful minds work on breaking Nazi codes. (This top-secret project actually existed.) So far, they've done wonderfully well, but now the Nazis have changed their code.

The Allies' best hope is a brilliant mathematician named Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott). But stress and a wayward girlfriend, Claire (Saffron Burrows), have given him a nervous breakdown. Summoned back to Bletchley, Tom is expected to do in four days what took him 10 months the last time.

No wonder he decides to check on Claire — for a morale lift if nothing else. But at her house, he finds that she's gone. A cache of stolen Nazi papers is hidden under a loose floorboard. To find Claire — and find out about the documents — he turns to Claire's housemate, Heather (Winslet). The somewhat dowdy Heather, who's more than a little sick of Claire's numerous suitors, agrees to help. But she can't help needling Tom: “I could fill a bus with men looking for Claire.”

Thus Tom is plunged into two possibly related mysteries. The title could refer to the Enigma machine itself, a kind of Rube Goldberg typewriter capable of creating an unbreakable code. It could also be an apt description of the missing Claire. Is she a spy? Is she being chased by spies? Is she dead or has she run off with another man? There's a whole lot more going on, and much of it is so confusing that you, like me, may feel like the American officer who blusters during one meeting, “I haven't understood a word.”

By the end, you still may not be entirely sure what's happened. It doesn't really matter. Alfred Hitchcock had a term for whatever or whomever everyone was trying to find or figure out: “the McGuffin.” It didn't matter what the McGuffin was; there just had to be one. The code is this movie's McGuffin. You don't have to understand it completely; you just need to hang in there for the ride.

Best known as the sleek villain in "Mission: Impossible 2," Scott looks quite comfortable looking quite troubled. Also good is Jeremy Northam as a presumptuous and ineffably smug British agent.

That brings us back to that darn Kate, who manages to be winning even when she's given ugly glasses and an unflattering hairstyle. She was six months pregnant while making the film. (It's been around long enough to have been shown at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.) Perhaps that contributed to her doughy, dish-mop appearance. But her character is no sad-sack bundle of self-pity and neuroses. Rather, she's like those whip-smart heroines of the 1930s and '40s. When Tom comments, “You know, without your glasses, you don't look half-bad,” she tosses back, “You know, without my glasses, neither do you.”

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution