Not this time

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2015)

The movie boiled down to 7 flaws:
1. The usual "troubled genius" cliché for Turing. He was known to be eccentric, sometimes seen using a gas mask to avoid the hay fever, but also an athlete who could run more than 60km and almost got into the British Olympic team - far from the stereotype then.
2. They use the commander as an arbitrary plot device. What kind of commander hires a top mathematician to bust his balls constantly? And why the hell would he care so much about spending 100,000 pounds, not from his pocket, on something that can win the war? These people were desperate, there was research on *pigeon guided bombs* This character was not believable at all.
2. They make it look like Turing was a loner working on this new machine nobody believed in - in reality a code breaking machine already existed (made by the Polish), so it was common sense an improved machine was a plausible line of research.
3. They used Joan Clarke as a plot device to talk about feminism. She wasn't hired via the crossword puzzle (so none of that dialogue about the guy not believing she could apply to the job), and she worked directly with the team (so none of that non-sense about it being inappropriate to work with men). The plot is so flawed here that later on she is depicted hanging around the team all the time, in the bar, etc.
4. They make the knowledge that certain words would be on the messages as a late "Eureka" moment, when in fact that was a known exploit. The problem was finding the key fast enough (in that 18 hour window), and that's where the machine, plus improved methods, comes in. The movie was total bull here, and misguided the viewer both on the real history and on how cryptanalysis works.
5. They make it look like the code breakers worked like lone wolves, making the call on what they would reveal to the army or not - cut for a dialogue about saving this kid's brother or not for 5 minutes of drama. More bull.
6. After the war, Turing did important work, building the first general purpose computers with Von Neumann architecture (Manchester computers). The movie fast forwards right past that as if it's nothing.
7. The official record says suicide, but his death is still highly speculated. There are other theories for the cyanide poisoning:

Accidental (he was doing experiments at home that used cyanide and released toxic fumes - his record doesn't say anything about the poisoning being from inhalation or ingestion);

Assassination by the secret service (it's possible they feared his knowledge would leak, either as revenge for his sexual behavior punishment, or by being manipulated by a spy. The knowledge of the flaws of Enigma were used by the Allies to build their own, stronger cipher, and by 1952 the Soviets were rising as a menace).

The movie could've kept this suspense in the air, instead of just giving the official record death before the credits.
Conclusion:
Lazy writing. Lacked the sensibility for a biopic. Too much poetic license. Sprinkled some political criticism (feminism, gay prosecution) on top to win an Oscar, while at the same time these aspects lacked in breadth and depth.
Still waiting for a movie that does Turing justice, an unappreciated and controversial character of our modern history.