Fantastic source material, so-so execution

Rating: Null/10 (25 January 2018)

The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a 20th century mathematician, who is known as the father of theoretical computer sciences and the breaker of the Enigma machine during World War Two. He's also the inventor of the Turing Test, in which a machine is to be said intelligent if someone conversing with it cannot tell whether it's a man or a machine. Which makes him the father of artificial intelligence as well.
What a fascinating man, and to the film's credit, the actual story cannot be watered down. The film focuses on Turing's career as a World War Two codebreaker and his invention of a machine capable of breaking the Enigma machine, which the Nazis used to hide all their important messages, making war intelligence rather lopsided in their favour.
Now, to be fair, the film is rather famously historically inaccurate. Turing was nowhere as near autistic as Cumberbatch shows him, he didn't really quarrel with military leadership, he didn't confront any spies and while he was homosexual, it didn't define his life like this film is trying to claim.
And that last part is a big problem in the film. Sexual equality is an important subject, certainly, but with Alan Turing there is so much more to talk about. I'd be much more interested in finding out more about his theories concerning artificial intelligence than I am watching him figuring out his feelings about male gender. But now the movie takes its sweet time raving about homophobia, effectively splitting the narrative in half, with neither side coming out feeling whole and fully realized.
Still, the majority of the story is interesting. Not a perfect film, but a serviceable period drama no doubt.