Good but it could have been much better

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2019)

This film is based on the life of Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), an Englishman who headed a team that decrypted the Nazis' Enigma code during World War II. Through flashback and flash-forward, three time periods are exposed: Turing's childhood in a boarding school in the 1920s, the war period, and his post-war life beginning in 1951 after he had been convicted for being sexually involved with another man.
"The Imitation Game" is successful in recreating time periods long gone. The middle war-time section is the one that is given the most time and it is rightfully filled with excitement. After reading Wikipedia's comments on the film, however, it seems that many liberties were taken to embellish the historical truth for dramatic purposes. While this works most of the time in film, it is questionable in this case - not only for the large number of changes but also because at least one posthumous reputation has been harmed.
I believe the film would have been more effective with a different time structure. The rare early flashbacks were perfect and complete. Young actor Alex Lawther (young Turing) is very powerful in a scene in which he is given bad news while his face shows how well trained he already is in upholding a stiff upper lip.
I believe that the other two sections should have been linear and included the time period between them. It would have been intriguing to see the transition from post-war glory to adjusting to regular life as well as the terrible times during and after Turing's conviction. This last section included a very moving scene that was well acted between Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley who played Joan Clarke, the lone female on the team of cryptanalysts (whose story might also make a fine film).
Sadly, this last period of the film had such a limited time, it felt more like an extended footnote. It deserved more emphasis. There might have been more genuine drama if the middle section had less embellishments and the later section exposed more of the real drama - the heartbreaking irony that a national (and international) hero was prosecuted by a cruel law unfairly relating to private conduct.
Cumberbatch's best acting is in this last section. In the middle portion, he does a fine job as someone who is work-obsessed and emotionally withdrawn but this later section clearly shows a man who is broken and heavily medicated. There is also little evidence in the movie that show's Turing's homosexuality aside from various comments. In exposing more of the post-war period, Cumberbatch's performance would have been elevated from one that is very good to one that would have been outstanding.