APPEAL TOUGH TO DECIPHER.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

A COUPLE of years ago, the Brits were crying bloody murder about the submarine thriller ``U-571,'' which gave the Americans credit for a World War II operation that was actually carried out by the Limeys. The English have their revenge with ``Enigma,'' which revisits the same historical subject matter in a way that will delight Anglophiles and bore the rest of humanity to tears.

Director Michael Apted and screenwriter Tom Stoppard seem to think that offering romance and melodrama in the guise of historical fiction is somehow an improvement over a dopey action movie. It's not. Certainly those who like to while away their Sunday afternoons sipping Earl Grey tea and watching tapes of old ``Masterpiece Theatre'' episodes will find much to appreciate in the movie's relentless Englishness; indeed ``Enigma'' seems to have been made not for American movie theaters but for rainy-day viewing on the telly. It wears its dourness as a badge of honor.

The movie is set in 1943 at Bletchley Park, Britain's top-secret code- breaking center, 60 miles north of London. The Allies are in a panic because the Nazi U-boats have unexpectedly changed their code just as the largest convoy ever to cross the Atlantic has left America.

The desperation leads to the recall of expert code breaker Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott), who had left Bletchley Park after going bonkers. It wasn't the work that drove the tortured Jericho mad; it was a woman in the Zelda Fitzgerald mode named Claire (Saffron Burrows). Now Claire is missing, which - considering the timing (the sudden Nazi code change) - arouses the suspicions of a secret service agent, Wigram (Jeremy Northam), looking for a traitor at Bletchley Park.

That sets up the tone of ``Enigma,'' which aspires to be a British espionage yarn in the vein of ``The 39 Steps.'' But the movie is deadeningly dull, mired in convoluted melodrama, nonsensical jargon and stiff-upper-lip laboriousness. It's by no means unwatchable: Northam and Kate Winslet (wearing clothes and Harry Potter glasses), playing Claire's plucky roommate, give energetic performances, and there is something almost admirable in Stoppard's refusal to spell anything out for the audience.

But such obstinacy only works if you've laid the groundwork in other areas. Without suspense and intrigue, the audience has no patience for muddled exposition that, in this case, simply masks (or tries to, at least) irrelevancy. ``U-571'' may not have Stoppard's fancy phrasings, but at least it doesn't take a code breaker to appreciate it on some primal level.

ENIGMA - Two stars

(Rated R: nudity, a sex scene, language)

Starring: Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows.

Director: Michael Apted.

Running time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Playing: Laemmle's Town Center 5 in Encino; Laemmle's Pasadena Playhouse 7 Cinemas; Art Theater in Long Beach; Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica; Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

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Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet explore a mystery trapped inside a riddle in ``Enigma.''