Review: The Imitation Game

Gobsmackingly Engaging!

4 stars


Mini Review: 

If you use any computing device, then set it aside and go back to a wonderful homage to the father of computing: Alan Turing. Marvelously scripted, and even more brilliantly portrayed, this fine film will make you stand up and applaud.

Main Review:

There are movies meant for popcorn and stolen kisses. And then there are movies like The Imitation Game, which keep you engaged from the very first question, 'Do you want to play?'

And then it takes you back to the war. Not the sand filled war Americans seem to be waging with 'savages', but the one that took over world and gave us heroes who worked behind the scenes to save lives.

Or did they?

Did they play God? How did a bunch of gifted crossword puzzle solvers save the world?

The Avengers it is not. There are no spectacular special effects, no larger than life Hulk smashing his way through aliens, nothing. It took crazy cryptographers led by Alan Turing to smash the unbreakable Enigma.

You are frustrated when they are, you laugh with them, and your heart is yanked out and smashed by a sledgehammer when you see how draconian laws treated people. I have not felt so moved in a movie as I did in this one. The father of computing, treated like that?!

But then you want to throw something at the screen, for something else entirely. This movie has Keira Knightley. The weakest link. Now don't get me wrong. She was brilliant in Atonement and even Dangerous Method and Hole. But here, she is just a simpering miss and I couldn't, just couldn't take her seriously. 

There should have been five stars... But they had to choose her... Sigh.