It was a stressful week, one full of training and tests, and the only acceptable way to end it really was just to kick back and watch a good movie.  Unfortunately the said movie which I had been itching to see for a while now was only showing in one (!!!!!!) cinema in the whole of the Philippines.  But fortunately for me, that cinema was just a stone’s throw away from my office.  Because this is me making up for missing the Academy Award contenders Boyhood and Bird Man when they ran for a week (!!!!) each, there was no way that I could pass this movie up.

Here’s my round up of Morten Tyldum’s English directorial debut, The Imitation Game.

Please note that there may be spoilers.  Read at your own risk.

THE STORY:

The film is set around the life of bright mathematician Alan Turing: during the time he spent in school, during the early days of the war between Britain and Germany, with the Allied forces apparently on the losing side of the battle, and during the later part of his life after the war.  Oddball Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch – 12 Years a Slave) applies to join Britain’s best cryptographers and decrypt the messages sent by the Germans using a seemingly un-decodable machine called Enigma.  Commander Denniston (Charles Dance – Dracula Untold) begrudgingly gives Alan the job, and lets him join his team of cryptographers, comprised of devilishly handsome Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode – Chasing Liberty), friendly John Cairncross (Allen Leech – Downton Abbey) and young Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard – An Education).  The team is tasked to crack the Enigma settings used by the Germans and feed the information to MI6 Steward Menzies (Mark Strong – Kick-Ass).  Eventually the team enlists the help of a brilliant woman, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley – Begin Again), who grows very close with Alan Turing throughout the project.  The film chronicles Alan Turing’s struggles in building a machine powerful enough to save millions of lives while trying to hide his homosexuality.

THE GOOD:

1. Benedict Cumberbatch was crazy good.  Ever wonder how Benedict Cumberbatch would play Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory?  Well, here’s the movie for you.  The character of Alan Turing is basically just a stone’s throw away from his usual Sherlock, but Cumberbatch was able to tap into most (if not all) of the emotional high notes that made Alan Turing’s insufferable genius –well – sufferable.
   
2. Everybody in the cast had their A-game on.  Unlike most biopics released these days, all of the characters in this movie were fleshed out well – Mark Strong’s Menzies and Charles Dance’s Commander Denniston were particular standouts because even though they were only in the movie for a handful of minutes, all of their scenes were memorable.
   
3. BUT Matthew Beard was clearly exceptionally good.  In this particular sea of talent, it’s very easy to be outshone by the big names, but Matthew Beard made good use of his emotionally wringing scene.  It was one of the most memorable scenes in the movie because it was the only scene that highlighted exactly just how much responsibility the Bletchley Park team had on their shoulders.
4. The movie had most of my favorite actors up against each other on screen.  I literally gasped out loud when I figured that it was Rory Kinnear from Penny Dreadful who was going toe-to-toe with Bennedict Cumberbatch.
5. The pacing was quick and snappy, which was refreshing for a biopic.

THE BAD:

1. The lack of visual distinction between the different time periods.  I mean, yeah, it’s pretty easy to pick up which part of Turing’s life they were showing but since the film was jumping from one area to another, it took me a while to figure things out.  It probably would’ve helped if the filmmakers chose a different texture or lens to shoot the different times.
2. Some of the war scenes look kind of cheap.  I am appreciative of the fact that the filmmakers didn’t go into the gruesome details just for the shock factor, but those were some pretty awful CGIs.

THE UGLY:

1. Things didn’t really feel that urgent.  My only beef in this movie is that considering the task at hand – to break a code that can end the war – things didn’t really feel that pressing.

All in all The Imitation Game was a great movie to sit through.  Performances were marvelous all around, and Morten Tyldum’s direction was spot on, getting the best of the best from his cast.  And despite the fact that the movie felt a little bit sanitized, considering the material, it was still able to hit all of the emotional notes that it needed to get its message across without sounding preachy.
THE VERDICT: 8.5/10.  Easily one of the better movies I’ve seen in a while.

*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.