Disappointing Dull and Static

Rating: 5/10 (30 December 2014)

Alan Turing was an authentic genius, and one of the fathers of the digital computer. He is also a member of the Pantheon of Gay Martyrs, along with Oscar Wilde, Matthew Sheppard, and the 1980s AIDS Victims. On both accounts, he deserves a much better movie than this one. Never mind the gross simplifications and historical inaccuracies of his role in breaking Enigma -- that's just Hollywood dramatic license. Never mind that we are shown nothing of the sex life of an unhappily closeted gay man during the age of persecution. Never mind that we aren't shown his suicide by poisoned apple. The essential point is that we don't grasp the essence of the character because we're never shown anything of what he did or how he did it.
As one of Turing's colleagues says (quote approximate), "if you're going to play the eccentric genius, you have to BE a genius." This movie shows us only the eccentricity, and requires us to take the genius completely on faith. We are shown no trial and error, no conversations among colleagues, absolutely nothing to let us understand what the problem was, or what Turing saw that others didn't. All we get is a difficult, misunderstood individual, somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, who turns out to be right when everybody else is wrong. Zero Dark Thirty does a much better job of presenting that kind of character precisely because it shows the thought processes involved.