NOT a documentary

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2014)

I saw this film hoping for a full account of how the team at Bletchley Park broke Enigma. What I got instead was a bravura performance by Dominic Cumberbatch of Alan Turing as a man of unique mathematical skills but completely inept at almost everything else. Presumably he was on the Asperger's spectrum, although that condition was not identified until long after Turing's death. Of course, his life had to telescoped to fit into the format of single film leading to a number factual inaccuracies many of which are listed in the Message Board below, but beware of spoilers.
In addition to these, I suspect the depiction of the Commanding Officer should be viewed as a depiction of the type of forces officer who was completely unable to come to terms with the behaviuor of the academics who made the whole thing work.
To my surprise, Turning's relationship with Joan Clarke (Kiera Knightly) appears to be accurate and not an attempt to bring in a love interest. Clarke's sex limited her role in breaking Enigma. Remember, 1940 was a time when the RAF was desperate for experienced pilots, but women who'd been flying for years were not allowed a combat role and we and were limited to ferrying new, unarmed, planes from the factories to airfields role.
One other thing that disappointed me was the failure to differentiate between the Bomb (that was partly mechanical and had lots of wheels) and Colossus, built by a Post Office engineer to Turing's design that used valves, was entirely electrical, programmable, and the ancestor of modern computers.
But, as I indicated at the start, this is not a documentary, it is a superb depiction of a genius.