the audience applauded

From my favorite movies..

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Awesome Movie

Yes, a historical film. A good one. For the embroidery of details. For performances. For love story, secrets. And survive. And for smart way to remind an episode from WWII.

This is based on a novel - not a true story about Betchley and the Enigma machines. For that watch the Imitation Game. The story is convoluted and absurd. By the time things come together the viewer who cares what happens. Kate Winslet was quite plump here and kudos to her for playing the unattractive one. Saffron Burrows looks quite pretty. Dougray Scott acts tormented well. The supporting cast are all good but this silly story is just not worth watching

I am very familiar with this story, as my mother-in-law worked at Bletchley Park as a cypher assistant during WW2. A fact she never revealed to us until 1990, as she respected the Official Secrets Act to the letter. I read Harris book about 2 years ago, and finally watched the movie this week. The real story of Alan Touring, and his colleagues at Bletchley, the building of "the bombes" and the critical role they played is a very compelling story in itself, and had the writers of this movie confined themselves to that, this movie would have been superb. Instead we got a load of the usual Hollywood claptrap of romantic sub-plots with Claire, and dead spy chasing rubbish. We are to believe that during the most critical stage of the U-boat war, and the massive effort to re-establish Shark, that the key man Jericho/Touring went chasing all over Scotland , to track down a traitorous ex-girlfriend. Lots of spare petrol in those days ( NOT). This undermined great performances from Dougray Scott who played the brooding , sullen and exhausted Touring, to perfection, and Kate Winslett, also Jeremy Northam . Still worth watching for their performances alone.

I think this movie is a disservice to Alan Turing. He was the undisputed leader of the team that took the initial Polish work to break the Enigma Code, broke subsequent variations (such as for the naval Enigma machines) and automated the whole thing by creating one of the world's first computers called BOMBE. His work thus directly brought World War II to an early end and saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. He was also the founder of modern day computers and artificial intelligence (just Google 'Turing Test'). Why create a fictional story? In telling the story truthfully, they would have to touch on the fact that Alan Turing was gay. In 1952 he was arrested for being gay, was chemically castrated, and had all security clearance stripped. He committed suicide in 1954. Was it so unpalatable to tell the truth that the main character in this story was gay (as were thousands of soldiers who fought in WWII)? I think that story is more compelling. Are we so sanitized that he had to be replaced with a team of straight matinée idols? Alan Turing was one of the most important figures of the 20th century, and one of the most slighted. I wish someone would make a decent movie telling his story. You can sign a petition asking the British Government to apologize for the prosecution and castration of this war hero here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/