Sometimes, it's the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine. This movie kinda does that.

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2015)

Let's decoded this movie! Are you paying attention? I hope you are. The whole opening, voice over narrating is just a brilliant way to get the audience to pay attention to the film. I like how the movie really challenge you to think. If you don't want to think, then the movie tells you to bugger off. It has some balls. The Imitation Game is a historical thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum, with a screenplay by Graham Moore loosely based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. The movie is about British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), whom during World War 2, was trying to crack the Nazi Germany's Enigma code to help the Allies win the war. Without spoiling too much of it. The movie is indeed, Oscar baiting. It's bad and good. It has everything that the Oscars tend to like and want. First off, it's a periodic piece during World War 2 about a loose-cannon homosexuality genius, who might have some mental problems. This will clever help or hurt the film, as time goes on. Indeed, the film engrossing closer and closer to Oscar-caliber and would look so generic, because of those reasons. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, and its shows why he deserve to be a leading man. He really makes this part, his own. He delivered in every way in his acting. The supporting cast was just as good. This is one of the very few, Keira Knightley's films, that I can stand her. She was pretty good as Joan Clarke. Another good actor in the film, had to be Mark Strong as Sir Stewart Menzies. He was just wicked. Allen Leech as John Cairncross was amazing to watch. He had this presence in him that make the character very charming, even with the deep dark secrets, he hiding from everybody else. The movie framing was also well establish. You really get what year, the movie is trying to portray, when the film jump from one year to the other. Each flashbacks works within the story structure and you can easily tell them apart. In terms of historical accuracy, there was some criticism from other critics regarding the film's purported downplaying Alan Turing's homosexuality. I agree that the war effect should be the main focus of the film, but I disagree on them that the sub-plot of Alan Turing's homosexuality problems is overtaking the main plot of the high stakes game of life and death of solving of Enigma concept. It didn't undermined it, at all. I think, they downplay it enough, so that the main focus on the film is about the war effect than his homosexuality. Yes, the movie has a lot of twist and turns, like a secret Soviet double agent in their midst of solving the Enigma code, but it's in the small scale. It wasn't until, the Enigma problem was solve, that the movie then focus on moral questions and Turing's sexuality. I like how the movie has a ticking time bomb. You really can sense, the pressure and need of them, to solve this problem. It was well balanced. While the broad outline of Turing's life as depicted in the film is true, a number of historians have stated that elements within it represent distortions of what actually happened, especially in terms of Turing's work. First off, the movie gives way too much credit for him. Progress was actually made way before he join in 1939 and to say, that everybody was against his computer plan was an understatement. About Turing's social difficulties. He never had Asperger syndrome or seem near in the autism spectrum. He was very well-fit, physical and mentally. He got along with most of his colleagues in the colleges, he was teaching before and after the Bletchley Park project. With his co-workers in Hut 8. They say that he was very well-spoken and often jokes when there is free time. This is not coming from a small group of people. By the time of 1945, thousands of people were working on the project. Not only that, he work for a time with American scientists in Ohio and Washington on their coding problems. To think, that Alan Turing was in-closed from the world is understatement. About the fact, that he name the Enigma-breaking machine "Christopher" in the film after Turing's childhood friend is very false. In actuality, the machine was widely known as the Bombe. It was originally designed in 1938 by Marian Rejewski, who along with other Polish cryptographers had had successes in decrypting Enigma messages during the 1930s. It wasn't anything new when Turing took over the machine. He just redesigned and made it effective. I can understand, why the writers didn't mention the real life setbacks after the codebreaking of Enigma, to highly the Hut 8's moral code about who lives and who dies, but to say that solving Enigma was their only problem isn't true. After solving the code, the Germen often change the design or the use of the German Enigma machines so that the Bletchley Park code breakers had to adapt, more and more as the war went on. In reality, decisions about when and whether to use data from Ultra intelligence were made at much higher administrative levels. About Turing working with John Cairncross. It isn't true. There isn't enough evidence to prove that they ever met. About the nature of Turing's death is a matter of considerable debate. It still a mystery if the suicide was accidental or not. Overall: it's still a pretty good film. It's hard to believe it took these many years for it to be produced. The film's screenplay often topped the annual Black List for best unproduced Hollywood scripts. This film will win Oscars. No doubt about that.