Although I got the feeling that I was watching an overlong episode of the old Inspector Morse series from the BBC, The Oxford Murders is an intelligent and literate murder mystery as only crimes based at Oxford can be.
John Hurt steals the show as the arrogant iconoclastic mathematics genius of whom young Elijah Wood from America has come to study under and to have him guide his Ph'D thesis. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but a series of homicides that are linked by a killer dropping Pythagorean symbols at the crimes intrigues this would be Holmes and Watson pair.
Both Hurt and Wood are inextricably drawn into the crime because victim one was Anna Massey, a terminally ill widow of a former colleague of Hurt's. Wood has taken lodging there and almost gets into an affair with her daughter Julie Cox who is also living there and taking care of Massey. He does later get involved with another Hurt's student/protégés Eleanor Watling.
Some nice cinematography especially at Oxford during their Guy Fawkes Day celebration aid the film which does drag in spots. Still the performances are good and the script literate. John Hurt is nothing less than outstanding. Give it a look if your taste runs to cinema that doesn't have to have a lot of violence to make it watchable for you.
John Hurt steals the show as the arrogant iconoclastic mathematics genius of whom young Elijah Wood from America has come to study under and to have him guide his Ph'D thesis. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but a series of homicides that are linked by a killer dropping Pythagorean symbols at the crimes intrigues this would be Holmes and Watson pair.
Both Hurt and Wood are inextricably drawn into the crime because victim one was Anna Massey, a terminally ill widow of a former colleague of Hurt's. Wood has taken lodging there and almost gets into an affair with her daughter Julie Cox who is also living there and taking care of Massey. He does later get involved with another Hurt's student/protégés Eleanor Watling.
Some nice cinematography especially at Oxford during their Guy Fawkes Day celebration aid the film which does drag in spots. Still the performances are good and the script literate. John Hurt is nothing less than outstanding. Give it a look if your taste runs to cinema that doesn't have to have a lot of violence to make it watchable for you.