How is that not like talking

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2015)

Entertaining, but it spreads itself too thin.
This man's life seems very complex, and the film touches on a lot of difficult themes without nailing them.
The story of breaking the cypher is well done, with the right degree of set-back and struggle. The eureka sequence is good, although the celebration of their success is uninspired.
What follows is full of potential, as the deceptiveness of the state crushes the individual. I wish they'd tied this in with Turing's view on violence. How would that reflect on war, on the winners of the war? How does Turing's statistical approach affect our notions of good and evil? Serious stuff.
But instead of an anti-war film they gave us a tragic tale of bigotry, and it peters out with his sad life.
Not being too critical. It's just a difficult story to handle.
Apart from that the two leads play really well together. There are a few bum notes. The joke he didn't get wasn't a joke. Knightley doesn't really seem to help with the code breaking. And the "deep" line about those we least expect is used like a sledgehammer.
ps. His intro to cryptography is a nice observation on subtext. Careful talk costs lives - there's your irony.