Review: The Imitation Game

[WillBrink]

I watched The Imitation Game last night. No one at the time other than a small number of people (due to being classified) and few today realize just how important breaking the Germans "unbreakable" enigma code was to the war. Had they not broken that code, at the very least, the war would have lasted years longer and killed millions more to the loss of that war itself as a possibility.

One of the greatest minds of his time, mathematician Alan Turing cracked the enigma code. Turing's ideas still impact a number of important areas today and he was way ahead of his time and a truly remarkable person. The movie does a nice job of balancing the technical importance of the essential matter of breaking the code with the personal life of Turing, who's life was essentially destroyed because he was gay, which was literally illegal in England at that time. The movie also illustrates the extreme suppression of women at the time and seems to fancy itself not just a spy thriller genre but social justice champion, the latter of which gets overly heavy handed toward the end. I think simply showing us what it was like for them at the time, vs beating the viewer over the head at the end with text that seemed very out of place to the central theme of the movie, would have been more effective.

The acting by Benedict Cumberbatch (who's proving to be a very dynamic actor) and cast is top tier and is what makes the movie above your average movie of the ilk.

PS: The Germans on the front lines did realize the code had been broken and tried to convince their bosses it had been broken but good old German arrogance, refused to believe their "unbreakable" had indeed been broken. It's a good thing the German high command was so damn arrogant. It cost them dearly. The movie makes no mention of this and I think at least a few scenes from the German side could have really done justice to this otherwise very good movie.

I give it an A-

[sevenhelmet]

Nice summation, Will- I agree completely. Except for the last few minutes, I thought it was well-produced with good cast and acting.

[WickedWillis]

I thought it was incredibly boring and I really did not enjoy it. Cumberbatch plays the same role in every film he's in, he has no depth to his acting and he gets hard to watch for more than ten minutes. Knightly is equally as terrible IMO. For a film about such a vital and important part of history, I feel the story really deserved a better film.

[WillBrink]

I thought it was incredibly boring and I really did not enjoy it. Cumberbatch plays the same role in every film he's in, he has no depth to his acting and he gets hard to watch for more than ten minutes. Knightly is equally as terrible IMO. For a film about such a vital and important part of history, I feel the story really deserved a better film.

I guess that's what makes horse racing.

[jpmuscle]

I saw it last week and I enjoyed it as well. Turing was certainly a brilliant individual and I imagine it could be a very lonely existence when functioning on such a intellectual level.

[WillBrink]

I saw it last week and I enjoyed it as well. Turing was certainly a brilliant individual and I imagine it could be a very lonely existence when functioning on such a intellectual level.

Yes, I find it very difficult

[Moose-Knuckle]

Watched it last week and I'll be honest, I'm pretty well versed on WWII clandestine services and I had never heard of Alan Turing before the film. Talk about a man ahead of his time! The father of computers no less.

I look at it as a historical drama, pretty on point and well executed. Any WWII buff should watch this film.

The only word I can use to describe Dr. Turing's fate is barbaric. As humans we really are our own worst enemy.

[austinN4]

I liked the movie, but didn't put it in the great category.

[Eurodriver]

I watched it over the weekend, actually. I enjoyed it. Could've done without the awkward pre-teen homo scenes at Sherborne school however.

[Renegade]

One of the greatest minds of his time, mathematician Alan Turing cracked the enigma code.

Enigma was initially cracked by a team of Poles led by Marian Rejewski in the 1930s. When Poland was overrun, they shared with Brits, who later shared with US.

While the Poles had found weaknesses in the system, there was still a lot of manual work to decrypt a single message, and allies were overwhelmed trying this. They were basically using handheld techniques like most folks use to crack the puzzles in newspapers.

Turing's contribution was to automate this process with a general purpose machine that could recover the rotor settings and allow an easy decryption of any of the day's messages.

tl;dr:

Poles cracked Enigma, Turing automated the process.