THE OXFORD MURDERS
2 out of 5 stars

i decided to give this movie a try since the subject matter of the movie seemed interesting. umm... it was a good try, but for a thriller, this could have done better, IMHO... :/


of course, the murders/story all take place @ oxford university. american grad student martin (elijah wood) moves in at the eagleton house on oxford's campus to study with the great prof. arthur seldom. (john hurt in a great/mysterious role) things go from bad to worse when martin is humiliated at a lecture given by prof. seldom as well as finding out that prof. seldom doesn't take mentees including doctorate students. martin befriends his land lady named mrs. eagleton, who was good friends with the famous alan turing. (famous for decoding the enigma code during WWII- eventually beat the nazis) he also befriends mrs. eagleton's musician daughter/cellist, who seems to hate her mother... both martin and prof. seldom stumble upon mrs. eagleton's dead body one rainy afternoon, and her death seems to be the first of a string of murders centering around logic and cryptic symbols.

this was a lame version of da vinci code. you have cryptic mathematical symbols and a "code" that prof. seldom and martin are trying to figure out, but unlike da vinci code, it's not as riveting/captivating/thrilling... the oxford murders were written by a argentine author and mathematician guillermo martinez, and it sure references a ton of mathematical principles and famous theorems. i think what bothered me most about this is the fact that martin's character was highly under-developed and he just "happened" to know all the right answers. i feel like we knew nothing of martin, wheras we we knew a ton of prof. seldom. (that just goes to show that elijah wood should just stick with LOTR and LOTR-related movies) despite all this, i do have a feeling that we might see the argentines or the spanish filmmakers out there tackling this intriguing story again for us. guillermo del toro or alfonso cuaron, you two listening? ;)