Based on Andrew Hodges book Alan Turing: The Enigma, the adaptation first and foremost accomplishes what it set out to do by telling a story that needed to be told

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2014)

Despite all of this greatness jostling for screen time at your local cinema and art house theatre, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch has managed to make a strong case for your precious $14.50. The film is based on British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing's quest to crack Nazi Germany's Enigma code and bring an end to World War II. By way of flashback and flashforward, director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Graham Moore trace three crucial timelines in Turing's storied life: his awkward coming of age at boarding school; his top-secret work for the British government in the 1940's during which he developed the automated electromechanical machine known as the bombe, the device that cracked the Enigma code and is widely regarded as the predecessor to the modern computer; and his tragic and deplorable conviction for gross indecency (read: homosexuality) which led to compulsory chemical castration in lieu of jail time, and ultimately, his suicide.
Remarkably, this is the first time Turing's story has been dramatized on the big screen, though for U.S. distributor The Weinstein Company, it has been well worth the wait. After topping the prestigious Black List in 2011, the script was picked up by Warner Brothers for a seven figure sum, subsequently dropped when certain casting talks disintegrated, eventually produced by Black Bear Pictures, and sold to the Weinstein Brothers' shop for a cool $7 million (the most ever paid for U.S. distribution rights at The European Film Market). The end result is a well-crafted, vindicating exploration of one of the twentieth centuries most impressive and perplexing minds.
Based on Andrew Hodges book Alan Turing: The Enigma, the adaptation first and foremost accomplishes what it set out to do by telling a story that needed to be told. Turing's contributions to the Allied war effort, artificial intelligence, and theoretical computer science (not to mention his world class marathon running talent) transformed the way intelligence and data are gathered and implemented on and off the battlefield. That Benedict Cumberbatch was able to so beautifully embody the arrogant, antisocial genius who seemed more at home tinkering with aluminium and copper and dissecting Nazi ciphers than attempting the insurmountable task of engaging with other people makes The Imitation Game an inspiring watch. The actor's self-assurance and wit that audiences have grown accustomed to through his BBC role as a modern day Sherlock Holmes prove useful as he tackles Turing, but it is the added layer of chronic angst and heartbreak that truly breath life into the character. It's hard to walk away from the movie's final scenes unaffected.
Despite Cumberbatch's ability to build real empathy for his subject, the film at times regrettably falls into cliché. An oft repeated, audience-pleasing one-liner and a handful of generic biopic moments cast a delicate haze of predictability over the story. Tyldum and Moore also seemed to shy away from the scientifically fascinating nuts and bolts of Turing's work and instead dwell in shallower waters, namely the man's social ineptitude and his complicated engagement to co-codebreaker Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). It was as if every time a stretch of dialogue (and the film is nearly all dialogue) veered too far off course into discussions of cryptanalysis, bombe rotor settings and logical deduction, you could feel the filmmakers reeling it back in to safer territory. To be fair, The Imitation Game is a narrative about the life of Alan Turing and not an episode of How It's Made. Nevertheless, engrossing speech doesn't always have to be grandiose; the best part about Apollo 13 is getting lost in the complicated details of physics and spacecraft engineering. Letting people figure out for themselves that something is incredible is always better than telling them yourself.
However, the conceit of Turing as an enigma in and of himself is a powerful one that distinguishes the film from predecessors in its genre. In a pivotal interrogation scene, Turing invites his interviewer to play the logician's famous imitation game—or Turing Test—where through a series of questions one tries to discern if their counterparty is a human or a machine. Following the interrogation, Turing challenges the questioner to define him: is he a man or a machine? Or is he a monster? A homosexual? All of the above? To judge a person on just one of their marginal attributes without recognizing all the others, much like the British government did in its shameful conviction and sentencing of Turing in 1952, is to neglect the imperfect dynamism that makes a human a human. While posthumous awards, royal pardons and cultural media can't right the wrong that was done to one of Britain's greatest minds, The Imitation Game at the very least shares Turing's greatness with anyone willing to seek it out.