The Code Of The West

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2014)

Fairly solid effort with all the usual clichés - local boy makes good, 'outsider' eventually gains acceptance into the group, etc - present and accounted for. Based on real events with perhaps the occasional fabrication it's essentially an ensemble piece that is nothing without a grandstand central performance. Benedict Cumberbatch is as good as virtually all the reviews say he is as Alan Turing, a gay cryptanalyst who led the team that 'cracked' the enigma code which in turn shortened world war two by an estimated two years. As is often the case in films of this nature there is a jarring note and it takes the form of Keira Knightly who, it seems, will just not go away, and keeps inflicting her inadequate acting and defiantly off-kilter features on audiences the world over. Turing has some good lines and Cumberbatch delivers them convincingly, I wasn't bored and neither, I'm guessing, will you be.