Crimes à Oxford

Philosophy, mathematics & logic, Oxford University, murder, intellectuals … all the components that one could hope for in a cerebral, cozy British murder mystery. I, like several others who have written reviews, had high hopes for what would be served up, but ended up disappointed.

The genuinely famous "Fermat's Last Theorem" mysteriously became "Bormat's Last Theorem," which was somewhat indicative of much of the flimflam & fakery that enveloped the movie. The whole production was buried in pseudo intellectualism, name-dropping (numerous mathematicians, logicians & philosophers who would probably have preferred, like Fermat, that their names had been changed to protect their reputations) and contrived clues that depended on parsing a presumed mathematical/logical series. Beneath it all there was a plot that might have qualified for a mediocre episode of Midsomer Murders or Columbo, but would hardly engage the "little grey cells" of even Hercule Poirot.

Martin (Elijah Wood) and Arthur Seldom (John Hurt) spend a good deal of their time shouting at one another (and various other people) in ersatz academic one-upmanship, apparently on the assumption that the louder you are, the more convincing your dubious thinking must be. More alarming, Martin felt compelled to dash from pillar to post every few minutes, frequently colliding with other people carrying books or papers that went flying in the air. Rather unconvincing romantic couplings and consequent jealousies seemed totally disconnected from the rest of the story. Towards the end we were even treated to a rather tepid car chase and fiery bus crash in a vain effort to heighten the drama.

This is a case where less would have certainly been more. Too much was thrown in, in an attempt to elevate a trite and poorly concocted plot with a cloak of intellectualism and atmospherics. Too many unhinged and bipolar characters were floating about. It all seemed to be a hodgepodge of distractions aimed at concealing the absence of substance.

It just never came together.

I had high hopes for "The Oxford Murders", a new Straight-to-DVD film starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt, and most of those hopes were slowly let down as I watched the movie.

The film follows Martin (Wood), an American who travels to Oxford to write his thesis under the legendary mathematician Arthur Seldom (Hurt), and finds an angry, pompous old man instead of the wise and caring fellow he had imagined. Disillusioned, Martin is about to return home when he and Seldom find a dead body. The rest of the film covers Martin and Seldom's race against time to find the killer, using the mathematical theories that both are knowledgeable about.

The film is pretty bland. It's characters, save the amazing John Hurt, are one-dimensional. Martin is boring and unengaging and Elijah Wood does nothing to improve his script. The same can be said of Julie Cox and especially Leonar Watling. John Hurt is the only reason I finished, really. His acting skill is not at home in the world of blandness.

You could do better than "The Oxford Murders", but if you're not looking for too much it will suffice.

The Oxford Murders is one of a very rare type of movie, I'm not even sure what you would call it. Intellectual Thriller, or maybe Nerd Mystery. Whatever the category, it's one of those thrillers where the leads are so intelligent and inquisitive that they often fly into uncontrollable excitement because of some new bit of mathematical code that just popped into their minds.

It starts out with a great hook – a professor is telling a story to his class about a man who, in the midst of a heated battle, sat down amidst all of the gunfire around him and wrote feverishly in his notebook, because he absolutely had to write down what was in his mind at that very moment. What was so important that he would risk his life?

Much of the first part of the movie is a philosophical discourse which asks us generic existential clichés like Can we know the truth? And how do we really know anything? Elijah Wood stars as Martin, a young American so eager to achieve the answers to these questions that he travels to England with the sole purpose of picking the brain of a Professor Seldom (whose name sounds like it belongs in a Harry Potter story), the man who was giving the lecture at the beginning of the movie.

You see, Martin believes that if we uncover the secret meaning of numbers, we'll know the secret meaning of reality. I'm going to just come right out and say that the movie pretty much lost me at this point. I'm not sure how the meaning of numbers is connected to the meaning of reality, or if the meaning of reality means the meaning of life or just the true nature of our surroundings, and most importantly, I didn't know there was a secret meaning of numbers. In fact, until I saw this movie, I thought that mathematics was a universal language. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in my college philosophy classes.

Regardless, questions like these soon become of the utmost importance, as a series of murders begin happening that seem to be driven by an intellectual motive. At this point you'll notice that every character's behavior and background is designed to make them a suspect, and the movie literally turns into a game of Clue. During their investigations, Seldom and Martin actually discuss the similarities to Clue and how best to solve the mystery using that format.

To muddle things even further, the movie uses philosophy to stretch reasonable doubt to the absolute extreme. Seldom explains to Martin in dramatically hushed language that no matter how certain and clear and obvious the evidence, we can never be ABSOLUTELY certain who the killer is.

This is the kind of nihilism that leads to the logical conclusion that we should just open all of the prisons and let everyone run free, and maybe even dismantle the entire legal system because, following that logic, it clearly serves no purpose.

But one thing I did love about the movie is how Martin shows up from America, this gigantic math geek if ever there was one, and immediately makes friends with two beautiful girls who immediately fall in love with him. I hate it when that happens! One of them, who he met while playing racquetball, is so stunningly beautiful that it makes no sense when she falls for this guy. She makes Elijah Wood look like a little kid!

I think there's a good sex scene in the movie where you can see her naked, but I missed almost the entire thing because I fainted when she took her shirt off.

There is a complicated and unnecessary back story late in the film about a past student of Seldom's who drove himself insane with his strenuous efforts to answer some of the some of the questions of the universe until he ended up helpless on a hospital bed because his body couldn't keep up with his mind. He loses his legs and his mobility and his sanity and then can't even do better than a hospital that has so little respect for its patients that they would leave a legless man lying naked on his stomach for all to see. Nice.

But in the movie's defense, despite all of the mumbo jumbo throughout the film, the climax is actually pretty good. You may feel completely lost for a good part of the running time unless you have a little background in mathematics and philosophy yourself (I don't).

But unfortunately, they still can't resist handing us a nicely packaged philosophical sound bite to wrap everything up at the end, which creates a little problem. The mystery in the movie has been allowed to solve itself, and to do so in a pretty impressive way, but then they give us an entirely different solution through dialogue – a crazy solution.

I'm willing to bet that this story looked great on paper, but on the screen there is a little too much nonsense to deal with and FAR too much high-brow intellectualism. It's safe to assume that a large portion of the audience will feel pretty alienated. I personally have a tough time relating to characters that get uncontrollably excited about things like historical philosophy and math theory, and an entire movie based on things like this is even more of a challenge.

On the other hand, in a time when our movies are overflowing with stupidity, we should cherish the ones that really try to give us something to think about. But personally I prefer the ones that are just a little more accessible

Since previous reviews are visible it is impossible to write one as if casting a virgin glance to the movie reviewed. It is obvious that the majority of the reviews was negative although the overall ratings were not that bad.I have to say that the movie was tolerable and and even enjoyable and I think that negative criticism stemmed from the fact that the cast and the locale as well as the intellectual pretensions of the movie raised expectations that could not be met. It is very common from my experience that when films deal with weighty matters such as mathematics, philosophy or religion they do so in a schematic and simplified manner and that applies also to movies that were successes such as The Name of the Rose or The Da Vinci Code. I can not find a way that such matters could be worked out and presented in a movie that has to last for about two hours approximately in any other manner that would appear anything but schematic and frivolous to someone who has personal experience or knowledge of such matters-movies are entertainment an not mathematical treatises or religious tracts and therefore simplification is a structural deficiency of this artistic medium cosubstancial with it and impossible to overcome. Therefore do not blame someone for something he can not deliver because of his nature.

Criticisms have been leveled against the characters and actors. Some people found that Wood was not attractive enough to find a sexual partner-as he did in the movie. Who is to judge that. By that logic beautiful people-whatever that means- should mate only with their kind-something that everyday experience denies. The inspector appeared as silly to some- well after all as in the book he did not find the real solution! The Russian student appeared as a caricature but after all that was the choice made by the movie-maker. As for the professor, well what can I say he was professorial and coming from a more traditional country in my experience professors are expected to act in a rather uppish manner.

The central riddle of the movie became crystal clear to me when I read the book because truly filmic time is to fast for me in order to be able to comprehend mysteries and their solutions and that is a general experience I have with films probably due to my lack of visual intelligence and comprehension.

I liked the sexy appearance of Lorna and I think it added to the movie as a diversion from the platitudinous philosophizing of some of the central characters.I think the movie had some sex, a little mathematics, some academia, a bit of mystery, the allure of a historic university town and a final twist of the plot-not that bad after all.

This film is about a mathematics professor and a graduate student trying to solve murders that are connected by a mysterious code series.

"The Oxford Murders" spends too much time elaborating and dragging on the relationships between Martin, Arthur Seldom, Beth and Lorna. It gives me the impression that the filmmakers ran out of ideas on riddles and puzzles, hence made up a series of love and jealousy scenes to fill up the screen time. As a result, the first 70 minutes of the film mistakenly focuses on the poorly built love entanglements, which is rather plain and boring.

The next 20 minutes starts to be interesting as the riddle is full on, but it is too hard to follow. Only the ending twist captivated me, but that lasts for 5 minutes only.

If the riddles can be more evenly spaced and better presented, "The Oxford Murders" could have been a great mystery film. It could have been captivating as a simplified version of "Da Vinci Code", but unfortunately it failed.