A Good Film, Carried by the Cast

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2015)

I went to see The Imitation Game last week in the most beautiful local film theater, called Tuschinski. This is one of those theaters where every movie comes to it's rights, and so did this film.
I will drop some quick things first: Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome, but I believe everyone expected that already. Before I went to see it, I had heard some people saying that his acting was good, but very mechanical. In a way I have to agree with this a little. Here and there, especially in the first half of the film, he is doing quite some things we've seen before in other movies. Nonetheless, he certainly surprised me in the second part, doubtlessly delivering an emotional performance that goes beyond ''mechanics''.
Then there is of course Keira Knightley, who received her first Academy Award nomination for her performance in this film. I'd say she deserves it, but honestly I don't see her winning it. At least there is some progress in the career of the actress that was mainly known for English costume dramas and the Pirates films.
Having said all this, I have actually dealt with the mayor elements of this film. Meaning that the rest wasn't really that surprising or ''refreshing'' to me. Is that a bad thing? No. Besides, who am I? I'm only trying to emphasize that this film, apart from the performances, wasn't a scratch more or less than I had expected.. and my expectations were normal. Of course I have to mention that biography-typed films are very difficult, especially about characters such as these, resulting in a big pile of movies of which the style looks like that of for example ''A Beautiful Mind'' or ''The King's Speech''. In fact, I have seen many films in the past few years that looked like this one does. The cinematography is normal, so is the overall look of the film. I don't really see why this film got a Oscar® nomination for screenplay, since many of it seemed very predictable.
Before this starts looking like a burn-down, I have to say that this film was clearly made with a lot of love and passion for the story, which is certainly one of the most unbelievable stories of WOII known to us. In order to end this review I would say the following: it will entertain you, it will move you at some points and you will probably remember it as a very good film. Not exceptional, but still very good. 7.5 - 8.0