Thursday, February 05, 2015

Review of 'The Imitation Game'

Two weeks since I saw this, and still no review - probably because there's so little to say. It focuses on Alan Turing as played by Cumberbatch, thereby making him out to be a near-autistic geek. I understand that the real Turing was charming and sociable, but films like to represent people who are good at science and maths as awkward as a sort of consolation prize for the rest of us. You know, they understand maths but we can talk to people normally, so yah boo.

Most of the story, including the possibility of Soviet spies, was already told by Enigma, which I think was a better film.

A few things to note, though. MI6 are the goodies, and their desire to intercept and read everyone's communications completely justified by the lives saved - I don't think the real MI6 was nearly as interested and involved in this. And the decrypt, and Colossus, are presented entirely as the result of the genius of Turing and his very small team - though actually Bletchley was an industrial-scale code-breaking installation, and Colossus was built by lots of people, and not just a bunch of posh boys.

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