Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

The Oxford Murders Blu-ray Movie Review

Let’s put it this way; I’d rather sit an exam than watch it again.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 7, 2010

Ah, the hallowed halls of academe, home to dusty chalkboards, learned professors, and—unfortunately—stilted murder mysteries. At least, this is the case in The Oxford Murders, a logic-befuddled whodunit from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast), based on a novel of the same name by Argentine writer Guillermo Martínez. The film boasts a litany of impressive mathema-philosophical references—from Gödel's Theorem and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, to Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox and the so-called “Butterfly” effect—but what’s missing from this veritable upper-level undergrad course is any sense of human conflict or suspense. The Oxford Murders shares the curse of every owl-eyed researcher and esoteric specialist: live too long in the ivory tower, and you’ll inevitably lose touch with the common man.

Elijah Wood and John Hurt catch a video-on-demand showing of "The Oxford Murders."

Of course, I don’t want to come across like some anti-intellectual fuddy-duddy. There are few things I like more than a film that can steep philosophical references in the whistling teakettle of human drama. But have you ever tried making tea with cold water? It doesn’t work, and neither—if you follow my metaphor—does The Oxford Murders. The film is high concept at the expense of its characters, who seem less like real people than variables in the script’s unbalanced equation. This might be fine for John Nash types, who see the world in strictly mathematical terms, but for those of us with less beautiful minds, The Oxford Murders is as impersonal as an algorithm.

Elijah Wood is miscast as Martin, an ambitious American student who lands at Oxford to write his doctoral dissertation. (Can you envision the overly earnest Frodo as a promising young genius?) Martin is obsessed with convincing his philosophical hero, Dr. Arthur Seldom (John Hurt), to be his thesis advisor, to the point of taking a room in the home of the elderly Mrs. Eagleton (Anna Massey), one of Seldom’s former friends, in the hopes that she might arrange a meeting between the two. It turns out this is unnecessary; at one of Seldom’s lectures, where the curmudgeonly old prof makes dour proclamations about philosophy being dead, Martin stands up and embarrassingly delineates his own thoughts on the matter. “I believe in the number pi,” he says. (Cue the sniggers of his classmates.) “The essence of nature is mathematical. If we manage to discover the secret meaning of numbers, we will know the secret meaning of reality.” Seldom naturally lays waste to such amateur-hour reasoning, but Martin has at least caught his idol’s eye. The next day, Seldom and his less-than-apt pupil incidentally meet outside Mrs. Eagleton’s house; when they go inside, they find the grand dame as dead as the proverbial doornail. Seldom isn’t surprised—at an earlier book signing session, someone slipped him a note with Mrs. Eagleton’s address and the ominous words, “The first of a series.” A mystery is afoot!

Additional bodies, all accompanied by esoteric symbols, turn up in the fullness of time—by which I mean the film is dreadfully slow—leading Seldom and Martin to conjecture about the presence of a logical series in the killings. That is, the supposed killer’s murders seem to be following a mathematically determined order. (Like the Fibonacci sequence: 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, and so on.) Ergo, predict the next symbol, and you have a shot at stopping the next murder. The only problem is, given enough complexity, any symbol could feasibly be the next in the series, and you could easily drive yourself batty trying to figure it out. (This is over-illustrated with a laughably bad flashback about a prof who gets so obsessed with logical series that he lobotomizes himself with a nail gun.)

The film proffers more possible suspects than Agatha Christie playing a game of Clue. Could it be Mrs. Eagleton’s cloistered daughter Beth (Julie Cox), who clearly hates her mother (and has a thing for the new lodger)? Might it be Martin’s Russian study-mate, Yuri Podorov (Burn Gorman), who resents Seldom for stealing one of his ideas (and whose voice, for some reason, is very poorly dubbed)? Or is the kooky, conspiratorial Frank (Dominique Pinon), obsessed with neopythagoreanism and finding an organ donor for his ailing daughter? Of course, neither Seldom nor Martin is entirely out of the running. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone suggested Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the monkey wrench. The final reveal, I should say, is both more complex and less satisfying than you’d expect.

To inject some life into the stolid proceedings, Martin has been given a steamy Spanish girlfriend (Leonor Watling), a nurse no less, who, in a scene that seems like an alien’s conception of what humans think is sexy, fixes him dinner wearing naught but an apron. (The film stops shy of having the two share a Lady and the Tramp-style noodle-slurping kiss, but just barely. And by “just barely,” I mean that Martin still eats spaghetti strands off of her chest.) She wants him to leave this murder mystery stuff behind, as anytime they’re about to get it on, Martin suddenly has an epiphany that requires him to bolt from the room. He’s a math whiz—who did she expect, Romeo? The first time they meet, he’s actually writing equations and taping X’s up on the wall of a racquetball court so he can mathematically calculate the ball’s trajectory. And she still schools him. The film has the same problem; it’s so obsessive about its concepts and the cleverness of its own internal logic, that it forgets how to play the murder mystery game. A thriller should put you on the edge of your seat, not leave you nodding off like a student at a particularly dry lecture.

The Oxford Murders Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Oxford Murders skips U.S. theaters entirely—well, I think it opened on a single screen in San Francisco—and comes straight to Blu-ray, where it's equipped with an impressive 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. Given the subject matter—mathematical murders in dreary old England—you shouldn't expect eye-popping color, but the bleak palette is still rich and saturated in its own way. A bluish cast tints most of the scenes, with amber hues occasionally taking over for key sequences, and while skin tones are pallid throughout, this is definitely an intentional choice. Black levels are mostly deep and consistent—you'll see some haziness—and contrast is pleasingly tweaked for a dense, slightly stylized image. What impresses most, though, is the clarity on display. For evidence of how crisp the picture is, look no further than the characters' preferred jackets—the fine texture of Martin's leather bomber is easily visible, and Seldom's appropriately professorial corduroy/tweet coats display every nuance of the their fabrics. Of course, for additional verification, you can also look to John Hurt's characteristically craggy face, which offers up its every wrinkle, pock, and pore here for our inspection. The only overt visual distraction I noticed was a brief moiré effect on the tight pattern of one of John Hurt's jackets—the one he wears on the bus. Otherwise, no complaints here. Grain is intact but unobtrusive, the print is sharp and clean, and there are no real compression-related problems.

The Oxford Murders Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Oxford Murders starts with a WWI battle scene flashback that may set your expectations for the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track a little too high. Here, gunshots ping through the rear speakers, mortar rounds explode with LFE rumble, and chunks of dirt and debris go spraying outward through every channel. There's nothing in the rest of the film that can match the sheer sonic expressiveness of this sequence, but there aren't any fatal audio foul-ups either. What we get, instead, is a front-heavy, dialogue-driven experience that sometimes calls on the rear channels to accentuate moments of mounting suspense. (Or, rather, what passes in the film for suspense.) You'll hear some quiet on-campus ambience, a clock ticking ominously in a surround speaker, a helicopter flying between channels, etc.—nothing bombastic, but all successful in building a more enveloping audio environment. Then, of course, we have the score, which fills out the space with rich orchestral arrangements and the occasional bit of chanting. Dialogue is consistently easy to follow, and the disc includes English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

The Oxford Murders Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Making of The Oxford Murders (SD, 17:20)
Pretty typical making-of documentary, complete with on-set footage and interviews with all the key players.

Criminal Math of Oxford (SD, 10:14)
Author Guillermo Martinez explains the concept of a logical series.

The Oxford Murders Interviews (SD, 13:45)
Includes additional interviews with Alex de la Iglesia, John Hurt, Elijah Wood, and Leonor Watling.

The Oxford Murders at Abbey Road (SD, 2:26)
Brief footage of the film's composer at the famed Abbey Road studios.

The Oxford Murders: Waiting for Alex (SD, 18:12)
Novelist Guillermo Martinez and screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarria discuss the adaptation process and make jokes about waiting for director Alex de la Iglesia to show up and join them.

The Oxford Murders: Professor Kalman (SD, 4:30)
A behind-the-scenes look at Alex Cox as Kalman, the demented self-lobotomized professor.

The Oxford Murders: Set Design (SD, 3:27)
A quick glimpse at the pre-production drawings for each of the film's main locations.

The Oxford Murders: Kalman's Makeup (SD, 4:32)
Not sure why they didn't fold these featurette in with the previous Kalman-centric piece, but whatever.

HDNet: A Look at The Oxford Murders (1080i, 4:43)
A typical HDNet promo, with brief interviews and a synopsis of the film.

Behind the Scenes of The Oxford Murders (SD, approx. 6:00)
Small snippits of interviews and a profile of the director as a Spaniard working in England. There are six segments here, each a hair over a minute long.

Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment Blu-ray (1080p, 9:02)
Includes trailers for Centurion, The Extra Man, I Am Love, and Demand Zero.

The Oxford Murders Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Oxford Murders was actually completed in 2007, but it's only now seeing a straight-to-video and video-on-demand release. This is usually indicative that the movie is either a.) not very good or b.) hard for the distributor to market, and in the case of The Oxford Murders, I'd say it's both. The film is by no means terrible, but it is magnificently dull, especially for a supposed thriller. On the plus side, the movie gets a strong presentation on Blu-ray, so if you're a fan of director Álex de la Iglesia and you're willing to give The Oxford Murders a shot—be forewarned, it's nothing like his other, more comedic films—then you'll at least have a pleasing high definition experience. For all others, though, you'll want to skip this purely academic exercise.