Computer science got the backseat

Rating: 4/10 (28 April 2020)

As a software developer, I was interested in this film because of the computer science aspect, particularly during a time when computing was essentially non-existent. Alas the story was overwhelmingly about his personal struggles with repeated flashbacks to his school days and random shots of Benedict Cumberbatch running really fast.
The actual computer science side was incorrect because Alan Turing did not invent and build the Bombe (the machine with all the rotating things) from scratch by himself as portrayed in the movie. The British bombe was a development from a device that had been designed in Poland, the initial design being from Alan Turing but the engineering design and construction was undertaken by an entirely different company. It was an official project so the scene when the machine had been running for a day and he fights to keep it running is almost certainly fabrication.
While speaking of fabrication, when the machine finally does work in the movie, they happen to decode a really significant message but Alan Turing supposedly decides that they have to keep the news to themselves in order to hide their new capabilities. Not taking action based on every intercept did indeed occur but in real life if he had done that he probably would have been executed for treason! A decision like that resulting in massive loss of life would have been up to the admiralty or the Prime Minister. It simply was not his decision to make.