Strong film brings you into a cryptic world

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2015)

It's not easy making a film about dry, academic subjects, even fairly lively avenues like cryptography with its feet firmly in deceit, concealment and puzzle.
Coming from a professional background touching on this stuff, I have to say it's easily the best I've seen that tackles Enigma, wartime code-breaking problems and Turing head-on. The cast are well cast and in fine form across the board. Headliners Cumberbatch and Knightley are reliably excellent but Matthew Goode and Mark Strong shone particularly brightly for me. Clever use of short war sequences amongst the studious battles on paper keep us grimly aware of what happens if they fail.
Of course there are factual errors, artistic licence with some story lines and so on: entertainment has to, to be entertaining and not a security video. But they do what a good true-life film should do: create the atmosphere to bring the audience into an unusual world and make them feel like Turing or the brave team for just a few hours. Enjoy stepping into it as I did.