A strong, stirring central performance is the driving force of this wartime drama

Rating: 9/10 (9 August 2015)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
In the early 1950s, in post war Manchester, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) reports a robbery to the police, but the claim appears to lack any validity. However, he does have an interesting story to tell, regarding his theory on how machines will one day be able to think and work like man. A super machine of his own was behind his own contribution to the wartime effort, where he was the socially awkward maths genius who was the main driving force behind cracking the Nazis Enigma code. However, after the war, Turing found himself persecuted for his homosexuality, eventually being driven to suicide.
Many years after the last effort, another film dramatising the events at Bletchley Park that played a, if not the, key role in Britain winning the war has come by, and much like the American offering U-571, there have been some frowning down comments from critics, especially those here on IMDb, about the historical accuracy and relation to truth. With a certain amount of creative license required to be an effective film in itself anyway, and not having that much knowledge about the ins and outs of it all myself, I choose to simply judge The Imitation Game on its aesthetic merits as a film on which there is much to recommend.
Gradually building his profile over the recent years, in time this will come to be regarded as Cumberbatch's signature role, the part that really gave him his kudos as a mainstream, A list actor and performer. It is a performance that requires complete transformation, and that couldn't be done with any half measures, and so he becomes the distinctive Turing, with the dress, mannerisms and posture to really believe this awkward, unassuming, introverted nerd is really in front of you, and you are party to his dogged, seemingly insane determination to win the war he knows it will be won. If you think of the world we live in today, and how computers now really are controlling everything (probably more than humans), then depending on whether you think that's more of a benefit or a curse, the character will stir your emotions more either way. But aside from this, it's an unsettling reminder of a comparatively recent period of our time when unspeakable bigotry was law and simply inhuman methods to enforce it so destroyed some of our greatest minds.
An impressive supporting cast, most notably Keira Knightley as Turing's insincere love interest, but also including Charles Dance, Matthew Goode and Mark Strong in other key roles, undoubtedly add to the overall mix in a positive way. It retells a story everyone was probably already aware of, but from a different angle and shining uncomfortable new light on grubbier aspects of it. ****