"The Imitation Game" Review

Title: The Imitation Game

Directed by: Morten Tyldum

Screenplay by: Graham Moore

Year: 2014


The Imitation Game had me hooked on its premise from the moment I first saw the trailer. Cryptography is a hobby of mine, so the subject matter appealed to me. Couple that with its being a World War II film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong and I was incredibly eager to see this movie. Did The Imitation Game do the true story justice?

Based on a true story, this film follows Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) who is hired by the British military to help decode the unbreakable, German Enigma. To do so, he must work with a team of cryptographers and develops the very first computer, all while hiding a secret of his own.

From the start, the movie is immediately gripping. The opening shot composition is superb, showing all these different diagrams and algorithms through great panning and tracking shots. And the way we are first introduced to Alan Turing is very interesting. This film bounces between different time periods and the first we see of Turing is after the events of World War II. It's an interesting opening and kicks off the story well. And what an incredible story it is. Since this is based on true events, I wasn't looking for creativity, but more for pacing and execution and this movie nailed it. This film is paced near perfectly. There is never a dull moment or one when you find yourself checking your watch. The story grabs hold of you and refuses to let go until the end credits pop on screen. It's interesting and heavily thought provoking. It also contains one of the greatest moral dilemmas brought up in a movie, maybe within the past decade.

The Imitation Game could have easily been a boring movie, but thanks to Graham Moore's screenplay, we have an expertly written, enticing plot. Of course, Moore didn't come up with the story, but he was tasked with making it appealing to all audiences and I'd say he did an extraordinary job. The highlight of the script is of course the dialogue. Every character has such engrossing dialogue and the character interactions are spectacular. And the dialogue isn't exactly "Hollywood speak" where characters always have to say something witty or something you'd never hear in real life. They sound like actual people, which makes them all the more realistic and easier to sympathize with. There is a term used in theatre called "busyness" which is used to describe actions done by characters that make the setting more believable, whether it be smoking a cigar, fiddling with their hands, etc. There are excellent examples of busyness in The Imitation Game, which aids the superb character building.

Speaking of the characters, our main one is Alan Turing, played brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch gives one of the best performances of the year and probably the best of his career. He throws himself into the role and becomes entirely lost in it. I wasn't watching Benedict Cumberbatch portray Alan Turing on screen, I was watching Alan Turing. Cumberbatch needed to embody so many different emotions and attitudes - brilliance, rage, excitement, sorrow, joyfulness, deterioration, and so forth - and he perfectly captures each one. He definitely gives a standout performance in a year of standout performances. Keira Knightley is the best she's been for a while, and plays Joan Clarke, the single woman Turing recruits for his team after she impresses him. She doesn't play as prominent a role as I initially expected but her performance is commendable all the same. Charles Dance is excellent as Commander Alistair Denniston, the team's higher up. His character is similar to another he's portrayed, Tywin Lannister in the Game of Thrones television series. No doubt he felt right at home with this role. The actors who play the crypanalysts that compromise the rest of the team are also very, very good, particularly Mathew Goode who takes on the role of Hugh Alexander. Last, but certainly not least (unless we are speaking of screen time) is Mark Strong, an actor who always impresses and his portrayal of Major General Stewart Menzies is no exception. He has significantly less screen time than the others I have mentioned, but he makes the most of the time we see him. This cast contains not a single weak link in it. One of the most beautiful moments in the film is when Turing tries to make amends with his team members by getting them each an apple. He also tells a joke but because he lacks social skills, this comes off as quite awkward, but the team appreciates the gesture nonetheless. You really fall in love with these characters.

The set design is something else that must be praised. The Imitation Game does an excellent job at immersing the audience in the wartime era of the 1940s. The sets look authentic and the scenery looks like you can reach out and touch it. Everything from the costumes to the advertisements looks like it was ripped straight out of the time period, making for a very immersive experience. The bike rides through a war torn London, the archive footage, everything is just a marvelous example of good world building. And the lighting is not to be overlooked. The lighting perfectly sets the mood for each scene and adds to this film's beauty. And the symbolic imagery, such as how Turing stands away from the rest of team at the beginning to signify distance in mentality and his running inter-cuts to illustrate his mind working to achieve a goal is stellar.

The musical score is also great. Though nothing is particularly memorable, the music is used more as a means to help tell the story. It has a playful tone as the cryptographers attempt to decode messages and it gradually picks up during tense moments, like when they decode their first message, the music makes a beautiful ascension that really gets the heart pumping.

In addition, this movie is shot gorgeously. The Imitation Game is beautiful to look at thanks to Morten Tyldum's direction. This film is very well directed and the care and passion for the true story is clearly shown. One of the ways this is shown is through the addressal of Turing's homosexuality. Alan Turing was a homosexual in a time when it was illegal and considered a crime. Turing, who is now considered a war hero, was forced to chemically castrate himself, in an effort to cure himself. The screenplay and Cumberbatch's performance perfectly capture this aspect of the film and it has a grand impact on the audience. It gives The Imitation Game another meaning, in regards to the title.

If I found any flaws with the film, it was but one. There are three different story lines; the main one about breaking Enigma, flashbacks to Turing's childhood, and flash-forwards to Turing's life after the war and how the police interrogated him. All three of these stories are great, but the latter does have some awkward transitions, and by that I mean none at all. There is no segue into these moments and they come off as very abrupt (this sometimes happened with the flashbacks as well). Also, these scenes occur so infrequently, that you find yourself completely forgetting about them until they appear again. By the end, they tie in very neatly, but the two or three times they appear before seem to not have much relevance (until the end). Another little issue is that there is no resolution to the bit about Peter's brother being on one of the boats they were forced to let be destroyed.

The Imitation Game was actually on the Hollywood blacklist at first (at the top mind you). Thank God this film was made because it is highly influential and it is a good story all together. Cumberbatch is magnificent, along with the rest of the cast, the screenplay is fantastic, the direction marvelous, the set design superb. Everything in this movie just works so well. It also has quite a lot of heavy-handed and clever humor that really caught me by surprise, but it is just so fitting. This is a very emotional and heart-wrenching movie, and one of the best of the year. When you are more interested in what is happening in a radio factory than on the battlefield in a movie about World War II, you know the film has done its job well.

Grade: A