The Oxford Murders

source: The Oxford Murders

I was looking forward to watching this film and wondered why there had been virtually no press about it - after watching it I know why.... The plot is awful and the acting is really terrible too which is surprising given some of the actors. Oxford looks amazing and so does the Spanish love interest of Elijah Woods but that's it, the film is a terrible version of Morse/Frost/Taggart and that's being kind. Don't watch it, its pants! By the way there is a sex scene in it about half way through....

Quite honestly, a murder mystery with no element of suspense whatsoever. By the time you get to the end of all the high-brow rubbish dialog, you really wish they'd all died. In the final sequence Wood's character reveals there has actually only been one murder and the subsequent deaths were made to look like murders by the arrogant professor (Hurt). This finally makes Wood realize that he has no respect left for Hurt's character whereas at the beginning of the film he was positively wetting his pants to be in his company. We are then expected to believe that a frivolous conversation Wood had with the murderer, led to the murder being committed and is therefore Wood's fault. Wood's character is left speechless and slumped on a chair. Hurt's pride resurrected, all of a sudden his views are to be respected again. Utter garbage!

This must be the worst film ever! I've never seen such drivel in my whole career of film-going. The plot is totally unbelievable as are the characters. There is no suspense. Some events are totally incredible, like accessing books in a bookshop that is closed, where the required books miraculously come to hand on the same shelf! The account of the philosophy of Wittgenstein is garbled and inaccurate. The guessing of sequences of images is laughable. The ending is totally crass. I could go on! At one point I thought the whole film was meant to be a comedy and that we were supposed to laugh. But I fear it is meant to be taken as a thriller. How on earth John Hurt agreed to act in such awful rubbish is inconceivable!

If anyone requires proof that Elijah Wood cannot act, they need to go no further than their local video store to rent this movie. Admittedly, the young actor is not helped by the script, direction or indeed overwrought plot of this effort by Spanish cult director Álex de la Iglesia. Oxford looks fantastic, Hurt plays himself (again) with aplomb, and there are a couple of nice cameos by Leonor Watling as Lorna and Anna Massey as Mrs. Eagleton, although the usually entertaining Jim Carter as Detective Petersen alas is set adrift by the stilted script and convoluted machinations of the plot. The accent of Burn Gormans brilliant but troubled Russian mathematician Podorov constantly distracts so much from his performance due to its awfulness, that I cannot say for certain whether I thought the performance itself as commendable or not. The dénouement of this particular movie deserves a mention as being possibly one of the worst executions of the "twist within a twist" plot devices yet conceived on the big screen. Not only will you have guessed the ending, and many permutations of it, by the time it comes around, you just won't care. This movie is about academic mathematicians, reputedly the worlds cleverest people, and a series of murders committed by one of them, but frankly, I think the guy who bags my groceries could have come up with a more convincing plan. (No, seriously, this guy is pretty scary...) All in all, unless you have seen EVERYTHING else on the shelf, leave this one ON the shelf. 2/10

First of all, I say that watching a film like this in a dubbed version, where the story is told in Oxford, it's a sin - just like smoking in a cancer hospital... I went in to see it mainly to enjoy watching a "good old" crime-story like I used to watch from BBC television spoken in "real" English, and though it wasn't 100% then it was enjoyable. I had no idea about who is "Álex de la Iglesia" and I was surprised by how well written and directed the film presented, not only due to the story but as well the actors he'd found, and here more the stand-ins than the main-casts. Perfect details like hopeless out of date shaded glasses, old tweed jackets and semi-long hair, it all gave the final touch to the story that some times got stocked in small unnecessary scenes specially written for selling better to the Spanish marked.

'nuff said well they say i have to include at least ten lines so i guess i need to spew some pretentious garbage to explain what pretentious garbage this film is. it purports to be based on a line from Wittgenstein, which the screenwriters not only totally misunderstand (or willfully misconstrue) but quote from the wrong book! so right from the get-go (since they introduce it in the first scene) the movie is painful to watch, for anyone with any knowledge of philosophy or mathematical theory. but even apart from that, it creaks and groans with tired old plot ideas. i must say that frodo guy has amazing eyes, but they're just a distraction, since there's nothing else to pay attention to in this clunker. highly unrecommended/

Elijah Woods, a mystery-murder, Oxford and mathematical geniuses all appear like the plot to point to genius but in reality this is a poorly written whodunit with a lot of money behind it. This film would have you believe that Oxford is filled with lunatics, idiots, raving-geniuses and clueless cops. This film gave me a headache and the only thing that kept me going was the hope to see Leonor Watling topless. Its too bad this occurs 2/3 into the movie and by that time I was driven by masochistic curiosity to see how terribly this film would end. If you're hoping for a mildly entertaining film to be introduced to some advanced mathematics, logical reasoning, or philosophy don't watch this film as all the math, logic and philosophy discussed in this film a college student learns in his/her first year. The writers are arrogant fools who think that they are smarter than their audience and therefore can hide their lack of research and/or knowledge of advanced mathematics and philosophy behind a plethora of big words and fast speaking. I enjoyed Woods in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hooligans and Sin City however this film will make me hesitate before seeing a film with him as the lead actor again. I seriously recommend that you not pay to watch this film unless you are doing so to see Leonor Watling topless for 2-3 seconds.

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.

This is a really bad film. The director/writer Iglesias has done a terrible job. This is so far inferior to the worst Inspector Morse episode that really it is embarrassing. John Hurt directs himself very well, except for the appalling error of mispronouncing the name of Goedel, which instantly shatters any illusion that he is an expert in higher mathematics. (A decent production would have coached him on this.) Elijah Wood directs himself with only moderate success, but then he is only a kid. Leonor Watling directs herself very well. Julie Cox overacts hysterically, in the absence of any restraining influence or direction. The intellectual pretensions of this film remain only that, pretensions. As for the cinematic pretensions, there are none, since it is not a movie, it is a shambles, unsolvable by any theorem, even in knot theory.