Competent movie on a very interesting person

Rating: 6/10 (6 February 2016)

Oh, Alan Turing, I never knew ye, but "The Imitation Game" is just a conventional biopic on your figure. From Joan Clarke's (a quite good Keira Knightley) late entrance to the examination that was to help you in choosing your team to Benedict Cumberbatch's interpretation of your person (also good, but you can't help but think that it is nothing more than a mild mannered and stuttering version of his Sherlock Holmes), this movie is good, but falls short of greatness.
The story itself is one that everyone should know about. Turing was a genius, a difficult one (is there any who smiles and is nice?; maybe no interest in a biopic about them) who gets into the supermegasecret team (some action movie shortcomings here, with music and people running from one place to the other just to make the viewer feel all these characters always had traditional random comment-light-bulb-running back to the office moment) to crack the Nazi German Enigma code. The movie does a nice (albeit traditional) job of presenting the characters and their struggle against the code, while offering two more moments of Turing's life (back in school, when he was bullied and after the war, when it was discovered he was a homosexual). It is all very neatly done, nice interpretation and pace, etc etc.
So why follow on all the steps of so many biopics from the past, as Turing was obviously a person who hadn't a conventional life?
You won't regret watching the movie. It is just that it could have been so much more that it leaves a bittersweet aftertaste.