Dramatization Galore

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2015)

When I read the Executive Producers were the Weinstein Brothers, I immediately knew the movie will take its creative license beyond reason. I wasn't disappointed at that. "Based on true events" doesn't mean anything as probably most have learned by now. Key events in the story line are almost entirely made up. True key events have been completely ignored, and the usual Hollywood political agenda's are on full display. I didn't ask for any personal political insights, I didn't want pay for that.
This movie aims directly at promoting homosexuality through emotions. First we are directed to love Turing because of his accomplishment, then we are directed to feel sad for him because he pays a price for being what he is. At the end multiple tear jerking scenes were built in to help you towards that emotional state.
The clunky behavior of the genius has been depicted the way it is always depicted: somewhat stuttering, looking at the floor, no sense of humor, not understanding metaphors. All in all, stereotyping and cliché galore right here in the very first five minutes he was introduced.
Turing finds the code by sheer coincidence more or less we are led to believe. The reality is that just about every story about accidental discoveries have been debunked. Newton's apple, Archimedes bathtub, all are stories which turned out not to be true. These grand discoveries, just like cracking the Enigma Code, have been discovered by hard work and professionalism.
Poland discovered the logic behind the Enigma years before the British did. The Germans increased the number of combinations, which made the code more intensive to break. The Polaks ran out of funds to create a better decoding machine and handed over the know-how to Great Britain and France. Turing (and certainly not him alone) improved the machine the Polaks built and which they called "Bombe". Not a word about that in the movie off course. Just like in the movie "Black Hawk Down", where the crucial role of the Malayan (!) snipers to bail out the Americans has been completely ignored.
Also, Turing was never investigated for being a possible spy, nor did he kept knowledge of a spy to himself. He would have played with his life if he did that. He was under investigation for being a gay tho. The scene was also used to connect Turing with MI6 even more, but that was unnecessary; as it turned out in the end, Turing was more than happy to work with MI6 for his own schemes (which is a lie too).
The audience will learn nothing about the code itself. Not a clue on how it works (it's not even that hard!), nothing.
Code breakers are hired if they could solve crossword or cryptographic puzzles. Needless to say that the smartest person is tardy but gets to participate in the test anyway (cliché cliché), and turns out to be even faster than the great Turing himself! An oh, it's a woman! A completely made up event. Feminism at work in its fullest glory. Acknowledging her intelligence (she really was) is not enough it seems. She had to be the smarter than all men, including Turing. She already worked at Bletchley in reality. And she slapped Turing! Beating men is a sure sign of female strength in the doctrine of many feminists. That too never happened. In reality Joan Clarke was very submissive.
Turing supposedly had a say in how to use this machine strategically. He contacted MI6 to scheme with, ignoring his employer. The reality is vice versa: MI6 instructed Turing what to do. Turing had no say. A feeble attempt to make Turing even better than he already was, but the attempt was over the top. I can't imagine the viewer didn't notice.
So there it is people. This movie represents blatant promotion of multiple Hollywood agenda's, over-dramatization, over-simplification and factual incorrectness about all key events. This movie represents all that to its fullest.