Review of The Imitation Game (2014) by Jason G — 03 Dec 2016

A fine-if formulaic-film that is elevated by its surprisingly beautiful score, Benedict Cumberbatch's spot-on acting, and every scene featuring the brilliant Keira Knightley.

The film's only true flaw lies in the content and layout of its screenplay. Alan Turing was found guilty of engaging in same-sex behavior, which was (regrettably, to put it euphemistically) illegal in England at the time, and to avoid imprisonment, Turing accepted a judge's verdict to inject himself with hormones as a means of self-castration. While "The Imitation Game" does feature a B plot in which Turing is investigated and eventually sentenced, the film largely glosses over the outcome of the trial, revealing to the audience the existence of the hormone injections and Turing's declining health with roughly six minutes left in the film. Turing's contributions to the Allies' victory in the Second World War were incontrovertibly significant, but it is only in the film's final moments that Cumberbatch reveals to a rather horrified Knightley the result of his trial and a few captions of superimposed text then detail Turing's suicide and legacy.

When I was a child watching cartoons on TV, every once in a while during a commercial break, a commercial would air in its entirety, and right before the next one began, the last second of another commercial would slip in by accident. I imagine that the local TV networks were merely airing commercials simultaneously and that the wires got crossed somehow; what else could explain the end of a Mazda commercial being interrupted by the half-second appearance of a toll-free number for ordering Barbies? That is how I felt with the final act of "The Imitation Game"; a film about a misanthropic code breaker began, played, and ended, and the tail end of another far more interesting film about the horrid treatment of gay men in the mid-twentieth century managed to sneak in before the credits of the first film rolled.