Today’s quick review: The Imitation Game. In 1951, a robbery prompts an investigation into the personal life of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a respected mathematician. The investigation reveals not only the man’s homosexuality, a crime in Britain, but his pivotal work cracking the German Enigma cipher alongside Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and Britain’s finest minds during World War II.
The Imitation Game is a historical drama based on the life of Alan Turing. The Imitation Game depicts three periods in Turing’s life: his boyhood introduction to cryptography and love, his wartime code-cracking efforts, and the later investigation that upended his life. The movie also touches on Turing’s dream and his legacy: the Turing machine, the theoretical construct behind modern computers.
The Imitation Game is a well-written, well-acted drama. Benedict Cumberbatch makes for an able lead, portraying Turing as a brusque but brilliant man whose intellectual pursuits have isolated him from the world. The story captures the difficulty of beating Enigma without wading into technical details. The high stakes of the endeavor coupled with the skepticism of Turing’s superiors gives the movie a nice sense of tension.
Give The Imitation Game a shot when you are in the mood for a dramatic true story. The plot and characters are interesting enough to be worthwhile even for those who aren’t typically fans of biographies. The content of the movie will not appeal to everyone, but those with even a passing interest should give it a chance.
8.0 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 7.0 to 7.5 for capable drama.