'Cracking' Stuff - well worth the rental fee!

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 2015)

The Imitation Game follows the true story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) a brilliant mathematician and expert in cryptonology who along with a small team of experts sets to work trying to crack the Enigma code.
This is an utterly fascinating film and was totally compelling from start to finish; Moore's wonderful screenplay gives us 3 different aspects of Turing's life - the childhood strand is there for character development and to help the audience to understand Turing and to get a feel for him as a person, the main aspect obviously focuses on the 'code breaking' and the 3rd element focuses on Turing's life after World War 2. Although the screenplay does jump from one aspect of Turing's life to another it's never done in a needlessly confusing manner and Moore's screenplay never has any unnecessary filler.
Turing is a socially awkward person, but he isn't knowingly obnoxious. For this reason it makes it easy to care for him as a character. Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) tells him that if he's nice to people then they will be more likely to help him - this leads Turing to try and be nice (resulting in him giving his co-workers an apple each and then attempting to get them on side by telling a joke which was clearly only funny to Turing). I really liked Turing as a character and that's ultimately one of the film's biggest selling points. Despite the fact that Turing and his co-workers squabbled a lot, I always felt that there was a strong dynamic between the men and this becomes evident in one key scene.
The next big selling point with this film is clearly Cumberbatch's performance; he was really convincing in portraying Turing as a socially awkward mathematician, his mannerisms and general demeanour were first-rate. The supporting cast were all fine, but it's Benedict Cumberbatch who was definitely the stand-out performer. The film also benefits from some rather handsome visuals.
The Imitation Game is a wonderful film which anyone who is a fan of biopics or modern history would be well-advised to check out.