Benedict Cumberbatch has pretty much cornered the market in playing arrogant anti-social geniuses so it is no surprise to find him here playing arrogant anti-social genius Alan Turing. What is a surprise is that "Cumberbatch fatigue" hasn't set in and that he still has enough weaponry in his acting arsenal to find new levels of sensitivity and subtlety and manages a performance that makes you forget all about Sherlock. Keira Knightley, Mark Strong and Charles Dance are all great too.
It's an excellent film and uncommonly entertaining considering that this could so easily have become a talky, worthy bore. There's a fractured narrative, lots of spy-story intrigue and plenty of thematic strands to follow but it all works. It never becomes convoluted and never loses sight of the emotional pull or the human tragedy. Yes, yes it's about cracking impossible cryptic codes but it's also about trying to crack social codes and it's about us trying to decypher the man, understand the sacrifices made and realign our perspective of the war. The story of Turing and Bletchley Park deserves to be as well known as 'The Dam Busters' but it is right that the social condemnation he suffered and the secrecy surrounding his achievements is given equal gravitas.
The title 'The Imitation Game' refers to the paper on machine intelligence that established Turing's name academically but as the film goes on it becomes clear that this is a wonderfully multi-layered title that feeds into all the key themes. It's clever, but it's not clever-clever. If anything the worst parts of the film are the scenes where the life lessons are overemphasised. When the line - "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine" you can almost see the highlighter pen underneath it and there are some preposterously cinematic "Eureka!" moments, but not to worry, I'd rather it went for the mass audience over the art house crowd.
It's not a thriller but it is thrilling and a film you should see.
