Rent The Imitation Game (2014)

Travesty of history Hollywood-ised story made for American audience - The Imitation Game review by PV

The first thing I have to say re this movie is that it is not a patch on the BBC TV movie 'Breaking the Code', starring Derek Jacobi as Alan Turing from 1996/7.

The second thing is that I have never liked Benedict Butterscotch, or whatever his mad name is, and cannot really believe him in the role.

The third thing is that this is a movie which is sheer fantasy, not accurate biography, and tells blatant lies about Britain during World War II - not that the intended US and international audience will care. But I do.

No-one 'starved' during WWII in the UK when bread was never even rationed - so goodness knows where the film makers got the footage of a woman eating out of a dustbin! In fact, rationing ensured everyone was well-fed - and the poorest better fed than in the 1930s; indeed, people had a more nutritious diet than many do today.

Another massive lie is that the US gave help and food to the UK. NO! The USE only LENT Britain money which it could then use to buy stuff from the US to boost the American economy. The UK did not pay off this debt until 2006! Unlike with Germany and Japan, Great Britain was never GIVEN a penny or a cent by the USA.

Another big issue with this film is the use of modern words when this is supposed to be 1940. Listen - NO-ONE used the word 'smart' to mean bright or clever in the 1940s; this usage did not become common till the 1990s! Moreover, a 'professor' in the UK is NOT just a lecturer as in the US.

The facts here are no such thing - and as I know a lot about Turing I can say with confidence that Bletchley Park's experts were ALL male, so NO, there was no pretty genius Keira Knightly character in real life. The politically 'correct' pro-feminist pro-gay polemic and plots here are irritating. The fabricated protagonists and obstacles that face Turing in this movie annoying to anyone who knows the truth.

This screenplay won the Oscar in 2015. That says a great deal about the Academy Awards, frankly. It did not deserve the honour at all.

Having said this, if you can look past the Hollywoodisation and lies than infest this movie, then it is an average watch - and will no doubt appeal very much to all the millions of ignorant people worldwide who know nothing about Turing. And yet, that these people think that Britain was starving during the war and saved by the US of A is a disgrace. Hollywood is always doing this - it did it with U571 which showed Americans finding an Enigma machine on a U boat (which the British actually found) and it did it with Argo, which falsely showed the Brits refusing to allow people access to their embassy (when in reality they did!).

Stranger Than Fiction - The Imitation Game review by Count Otto Black

This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary man who, depending on which historian you ask, prevented WWII from lasting until at least 1947 and possibly 1949, thus saving countless millions of lives, and may even have been personally responsible for the defeat of Hitler. Which he did by designing and building the very first electronic "universal machine", a gadget we nowadays call a "computer". And by the way, the software of the device you're reading this on uses algorithms created by Alan Turing, so it's still got some machine DNA from its first progenitor, the huge steampunk contraption shown in this movie. So, not too shabby for one lifetime!

On the downside, Alan Turing was a shy, awkward man who nowadays would be diagnosed with a disorder somewhere on the autistic spectrum. His wartime work was so secret that he was denied any kind of recognition during his lifetime. And that lifetime was tragically short. As a gay man in a country where being actively gay was legally termed "gross indecency" and punishable by drastic prison sentences, he ended up being punished so barbarically by the authorities that he took his own life at the age of 41. So a bit of long overdue appreciation for a genius who greatly changed the world for the better but was treated with abominable cruelty and almost written out of history is the least we can do.

On the plus side, not only is this true story both astonishing and tremendously important, but Benedict Cumberbatch is clearly very committed indeed to the role and gives it everything he's got.

On the downside, this movie oversimplifies certain aspects of the story a bit too much. Obviously they had to if they didn't want the movie to be 8 hours long. But they go a little too far. Obviously Alan Turing didn't build the first computer all by himself with minimal help from a handful of others, and the whole Bletchley Park operation didn't revolve entirely around six people, only one of whom truly mattered. There were a great many others involved at all levels, including my grandfather. But where it really goes off the rails is in trying to put absolutely everything on the shoulders of the hero. It's true that horribly difficult moral choices had to be made, but it's absurd to suggest that somebody with Alan Turing's job would somehow end up having to make all those command-level decisions himself. And the manner in which he makes a particularly difficult and tragic decision involves a coincidence so gigantic that what ought to be a pivotal scene becomes utterly unbelievable.

The other problem is that every emotional conflict is turned up to 11. A movie entirely about some people trying to make a clunky prototype computer work properly would be very dull indeed, but compensating for that by having everybody hate everybody else so much that they frequently yell at each other, have fist-fights, or even physically attack the computer which Turing has to desperately shield with his body, until they (mostly) end up as buddies after all, seems excessive.

So overall, a worthy but slightly dumbed-down and excessively melodramatic attempt to tell a story that genuinely needed to be told. It tries too hard, but its heart's in the right place. And it's a must for Benedict Cumberbatch fans who want him see pull all the stops out.

Brilliant - The Imitation Game review by CP Customer

Brilliant.

This film shows how option change in a short time.

If he has been born 20 year later what a different like he would have had

But than again he would not have shorten the War