What I liked: I liked the lady on the code cracking team. She was fun and spunky. I think Cumberbatch did a good job portraying Turing with all his really odd personality traits. Actually, I think the whole core cast did a very good job being believable little dweebs completely convinced of their own brilliance and dedicated to proving it. I laughed several times at the exchanges that he had with other people in the film. I liked the behemoth of the thinking machine. I liked the clips from famous speeches inserted into the film. Maybe it is because I visited the Churchill museum this year but I thought it was cool to hear from the good old prime minister. I liked the director of MI6; he wasn’t M but still fairly acceptable. “You are suggesting conspiracy at the highest levels of government!... sounds like exactly my kind of thing.” I liked the bonfire. I did some fact checking on the movie and actually most of it was exceptionally sound. I actually discovered that there was more significance to all of the running scenes than just Turing being stressed and running. It turns out that he would routinely run 40 miles in to London to attend high level briefings and he was almost fast enough to qualify for the Olympics.
What I didn’t: I didn’t like the plot structure. It took me a while to figure out that the police investigation was not concurrent with WWII. I kept expecting MI6 to come swooping in to block the local police force. It turns out that that was actually about 10 years later, so England was not actually in danger. I also didn’t like that they made it seem like there was no progress being made until the very end. Yes breaking the code was of course the most important development but there was incremental progress leading up to it. Yes Turing was obsessed and driven but probably not actually insane.
Who should watch this: It is a pretty good piece about scientists and engineers being the heroes and about making hard decisions.
Would I watch it again? I’m glad I watched it. I might again.
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