A film carried by the strength of an actor and the intelligence of a writer

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2014)

The Imitation Game concerns Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), an often unsung but wholly important figure of World War II, who worked as one of several code-breakers for Britain's secret Government Code and Cypher School. The men were a gaggle of mathematicians and linguists, who spent hours evaluating secret naval messages sent by the German's Enigma-software. Over three-thousand codes were sent through Enigma a day, and despite pervasive, around-the-clock work, the code was deemed "unbreakable." The Imitation Game follows Turing, an humble but ambitious man who worked to construct a machine to decode Enigma, as well as Turing's frequently abusive childhood, his relationship with Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a fellow-codebreaker, his other group members, and his personal recognition of his own homosexuality in a time when homosexuals were being charged with gross indecency.
Alan Turing's story may be largely unknown by many people, but at least he has the honor of being played by Benedict Cumberbatch, one of the finest leading male actors working today. Much like his work in the now forgotten Fifth Estate last year, Cumberbatch is the stitching that holds The Imitation Game together, and makes the film more interesting than a film about code-breaking would suggest. He is meticulous in his portrayal of Turing, right down to mimicking his anxiousness and his often antisocial behavior, which would lead to him creating the Turing-Machine. Cumberbatch has always been an intriguing actor simply because he is eloquent and unpredictable in how he wants to approach the characters he plays, yet consistent in being a convincing screen-presence.
Cumberbatch's acting ability is so strong he often distracts from some of The Imitation Game's lesser elements, such as the rather formulaic structure of the film, which cycles through flashbacks to tell stories in a vaguely disjointed manner. The film suffers from occasionally telling a remarkable story with either an indifference to the narrative structure or a foreseeable chronological timeline. Admittedly, however, screenwriter Graham Moore has quite the challenge at hand with The Imitation Game, as the material here isn't compelling in the traditional sense, and it's hard to concoct a great deal of suspense from a gaggle of guys trying to solve a cryptic message in one specific location. Because of this, Moore wisely decides to invite intrigue into the story rather than suspense, providing background to how Turing and company did their work and the meticulous process involved with cracking even a basic German message.
In addition, The Imitation Game proves it's more of a thought-provoking, contemplative picture than anything when it shows off some of the year's most lackluster CGI in some of its action sequences. It's hard to place too much of an emphasis on the quality of the film's special effects, being that, again, the film is more about revealing the nature of the job of a code-cracker than anything else. However, the film features CGI that begs to be validated, as it almost looks as if the film was modeling itself after sequences taken from films over a decade old.
Once again, though, it doesn't matter, for most people who will see The Imitation Game won't even bat an eye; they'll be too busy being completely amazed and captivated by the work of Cumberbatch and his ability to take a strange, off-kilter, but genius character and turn him into a human being through just a couple of scenes. Cumberbatch establishes Turing as not just an incredible man, but as a human, insecure, vulnerable, and unsure of himself when it comes to anything that doesn't involve his ability to create in just a few sequences, making most of the film centered on him and his issues for almost the entirety of its runtime. For an actor to not only be the foundation of a film, but the reason for the film's exceptional quality almost all around, sharing much of the glory with Moore, who competently structures the film around Turing as a human and works to make the film about the mystery of cracking the code, is quite the achievement.
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Strong, and Charles Dance. Directed by: Morten Tyldum.