Benedict Cumberbatch with another faultless performance

Rating: 8/10 (27 May 2015)

Admittedly, I knew nothing of this story prior to viewing The Imitation Game. Having now watched the movie I feel a little embarrassed that I had no knowledge of this true and quite remarkable story.
The story follows Alan Turing, a mathematician during WW2. He approaches the government applying for a 'top secret' job which is to help England de-code a German communications system known as Enigma. Each day the communications system is reset and scrambled, this gives Turing and his team only 18 hours every day before the code is changed and all their hard work is worthless. There are 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible codes each day which would of course be impossible; this is when Turing sets out to create a machine, a machine to beat the German machine. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a truly incredible performance; he is rapidly becoming one of the best actors of today's movie scene and certainly one of my favourite actors to date. He opens up beautifully is this movie and lets you in, he allows you to connect with his character and puts in a flawlessly emotion driven performance. He is playing a character based on a real person but doesn't allow this is stop him making the role his own. His character is socially awkward, arrogant to people around him and very witty. The supporting cast are all impressive and fit believably into the settings and story lines.
Based in the South of England during the Second World War is a setting that is not new to cinema, it has been done plenty of times before. The Imitation Game stays true to the times and produces fantastic sets and perfect costumes. The language used, mannerisms of the characters and the image of the working class v the upper class is portrayed as you would expect.
The story is of course a well-known one but it does branch off several times and takes the viewer into a different period. The Imitation Game flicks between three different time periods: The man story is in the 1940's but it jumps back ten years to when Alan was a child and also forwards ten years to a time after the WW2 events. This is done superbly and it made in such a way that it flows well and doesn't once leave you confused. The feature is also complemented with real life news snippets of the war, television recording and radio samples; this is not overdone and is used quite subtlety - a fantastic addition in my eyes.
Unlike me, many of you will more than likely know this touching story but I will not say too much in case there are a few of you who do not! The Imitation Game is a story of courage, dedication and cruelty. It makes you laugh one minute and cry the next but overall it gave me a very emotional experience. It really does open your eyes to a world with respect and views which seem a million years in the past but shamefully existed less than a century ago.
8/10