Review of The Imitation Game (2014) by William C — 25 Sep 2015

Alan Turing, a man who is a hero of WW2 and someone whose technological achievements are still felt today. The Imitation Game is a movie about that man and what specifically he did during the war in regards to the Enigma machine and how he and his team managed to override the system so that the allies could essentially know what the next attack was and when. I found the film interesting but my word is this overrated, the kind of movie that is typical run of the mill Oscar bait and a piece that although could be well acted, really doesn't deserve all the praise it gets. Now OK this movie is far from bad, far from being poor really but it's only an alright film and really nothing that jumped out as different or new. Sure the story of Turing is important I agree but it didn't have to be so much like a Hollywood made movie that is way too full of over the top drama.

The story is set into three time pieces, Turing's time at school, Turing during the War, and Turing before and shortly after being arrested on claims of being a soviet spy. The story really tries to tug at the heart quite often I mean it has it's moments of excitement and fun but a lot of the time it doesn't know whether it wants to thrill you or make you cry. The times it does know what its doing are when Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing is on the screen and usually in a scene where he has to really fight for his views, not only does Cumberbatch act it out well but also those scenes are the most beautiful. Cast such as Keira Knightley are OK and I liked the addition of Mark Strong although he is definitely not seen enough.

Director Morten Tyldum I felt was pretty average really, his vision is not properly set out from what I could see and with him at the helm the movie suffers from the over dramatics I mentioned. Graham Moore adapts the movie from the book "Alan Turing: The Enigma" by Andrew Hodges but although he won an Academy Award for his work in writing it, it is far from award winning stuff in my opinion. The script is full of things we have all seen before, we know roughly how it will end (well the WW2 part anyway) and the dealings with the disgusting attitudes toward homosexuality in the day are not actually explored enough to make us feel as bad as we could do for Turing (although Cumberbatch goes a long way to make us so).

Now if you go into watching this movie only thinking that you will find it great then scratch that because I and from what I have seen many others also find this your same old kind of story. The plot is fun at times but too slow to begin, the acting is not all good and although cast like Cumberbatch maybe deserve nominations for awards, I disagree with some other things this movie was nominated or won throughout the world. That said the movie is enjoyable, my review maybe seems a bit on the negative side but in truth the movie is satisfactory, enough is made of the typical plot to make this acceptable and sort of likeable biopic of Alan Turing.

So overall I would recommend it but not to everyone, if you like your stories that play out like this then go and see it, you may really enjoy yourself but I can't see why this is considered so great or incredible. So yes Alan Turing a true unsung legend of World War II and someone who should be remembered by the generations that will come as someone who not only helped win the war, but also saved possibly millions of lives too.