THE OXFORD MURDERS/SERIAL MYSTERIES

Code breaking time again, a la Da Vinci, as two math’s experts at the fabled university work feverishly to stop the murder of one cryptic landlady becoming the first in a long line of killings.

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If the title sounds familiar, that may be because you heard of the 2003 novel that inspired the film. Curiously, for a book set in Oxford, it was written by an Argentinian.

Equally surprising, the film is directed by Spaniard Alex de la Iglesia, making a first foray into English language movies.

And to bump the foreign quotient even higher, Murders stars Elijah Wood.

You might wonder if there were any Brits to be found in Oxford at all, until John Hurt (pictured above, with Wood) pops up at the professor at the centre of the action.

Wood moves to Oxford to study mathematics under the guidance of Hurt, a Professor of Logic, and, almost before he can crack open a book, finds the body of his landlady, a woman with a past who just happened to have been involved in the cracking of the Enigma Code.

Leave it to Oxford to have a better class of landlady.

Throw in a few convoluted notes left by the murderer with mysterious signs and symbols pointing towards more victims to come, unless Hurt and Wood can decipher what the scrawls mean, and the feverish chase is on.

Don't expect to understand every nuance of the convoluted theorems and dialectics. Just enjoy the spectacle of a pair of previously cosseted academics trying to deal, even outsmart, the real and violent outside world.

The Oxford Murders opens Friday, April 25, 2008.

Posted April 21, 2008.