'The Imitation Game' (Bletchley Park) 2014

Cyclingtourist · 04-12-2014 4:20pm

Sorry, the name of the TV production was 'Breaking the Code: biography of Alan Turing'

themountainman · 09-12-2014 5:51pm

Enjoyed this movie, mainly for the story, but it was entertaining in general. Having seen the Sherlock TV show it was hard not to see the similarities between Cumberbatch's interpretation of both characters, so I found that a little hard to ignore. But overall it moved at a good pace and I enjoyed it.

e_e · 06-01-2015 1:13am

Pretty dull movie. Getting a little tired of these amazing people getting thoroughly ordinary, bland and generic films made about them every year. This film fails both the genius of Turing and the talents of Cumberbatch. Here's hoping The Theory of Everything tries at least a little bit harder.

Looper007 · 06-01-2015 2:08am

e_e wrote: »

Pretty dull movie. Getting a little tired of these amazing people getting thoroughly ordinary, bland and generic films made about them every year. This film fails both the genius of Turing and the talents of Cumberbatch. Here's hoping The Theory of Everything tries at least a little bit harder.

I liked The Imitation game, it's not perfect or a classic but it's a entertaining film the kind BBC would show on Sunday afternoon which is lifted up more by a great performance by Cumberbatch ( I disagree with you e_e on saying it wasted his talents, his performance alone is worth watching the film).

The Theory of Everything has the same problems as the Imitation Game, it's a harmless BBC in the Sunday Afternoon film with a classic performance lifting it above its material, Eddie Redmanye is excellent as Stephen Hawking.

Pierce_1991 · 06-01-2015 2:33am

Agree with Looper007 on Cumberbatch. Thought he was fantastic, particularly

in the final scenes in his home where he breaks down. Excellent, heart wrenching stuff.

ktulu123 · 06-01-2015 6:44pm

Saw it last night, fantastic movie!

MisterAnarchy · 09-01-2015 3:36pm

I thoroughly enjoyed the film ,one of the best I have seen in the last year if I'm honest.

Good acting,a brilliant soundtrack and a lean running time at under 2 hours .

However my primary criticism is that the film is almost wholly a work of fiction .
Its historically 80% inaccurate I'd say ,too much has been changed or fabricated .

Shiraz 4.99 · 11-01-2015 10:18pm

I thought this started strongly, nobody does Charles Dance like Charles Dance.
Cumberbatch was fantastic in the role.

The 3 timelines got a bit messy especially with the police investigation after the war, I thought that part of the story could have been linear.

I really felt the post war scenes were the poorest.
There was a certain lack of fanfare once the war ended & the group were wound up.
I thought the story finished abruptly too and would have liked to see the full conclusion.

Good but not perfect, 7/10.

IvaBigWun · 11-01-2015 10:26pm

Cumberbatch aside this had all the look and feel of a BBC 2 Sunday night 3 part drama, rather than a Hollywood film being talked about for possibly Oscars.

If you want to see a film about a tormented genius then Ron Howard's 2001 "A Beautiful Mind" does it better in so many ways.

A disappointing 4/10 for me.

Looper007 · 12-01-2015 10:03am

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Cumberbatch aside this had all the look and feel of a BBC 2 Sunday night 3 part drama, rather than a Hollywood film being talked about for possibly Oscars.

If you want to see a film about a tormented genius then Ron Howard's 2001 "A Beautiful Mind" does it better in so many ways.

A disappointing 4/10 for me.

I thought Beautiful Mind was a load of crap to be fair Iva :pac:. I thought Shine with Geoffery Rush was better although both films told a load of porky pies when it came to their main characters true life events. I don't think The Imitation Game is a classic by any means but nothing wrong with a film that isn't all about fancy camera shots or mind blowing effects, Both this and The Theory of Everything have done amazingly well at the box office. But every year you get films like this that might not blow cinephiles minds but bring in the crowds and get a few Oscar nods.

Falthyron · 01-02-2015 1:45am

Just saw this tonight and I have to say, I am a little disappointed. The movie itself is fine, but Cumberbatch is carrying it. I don't think he should win the Oscar, as I think it will go to Redmayne or Keaton, but he did a very good job. However, if you took Cumberbatch out of this role the movie is quite standard without being particularly noteworthy.

6.5/10

K-9 · 02-02-2015 12:39pm

I really don't see where they got 8 Oscar nominations out of, The Theory of Everything is much better.

Flex · 08-02-2015 7:09pm

Im the same as a lot of the above posters, I was very disappointed by this. It was very drawn out and dull for large parts of it, although I was hoping it would

focus more on the Enigma machine and WW2 as those are things Im quite interested in, so maybe Im biased. Just really disliked the constant shifting back to his childhood, the message they were trying to get across could have been done with way fewer sequences and far less time.

donaghs · 25-02-2015 12:50pm

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

I thoroughly enjoyed the film ,one of the best I have seen in the last year if I'm honest.

Good acting,a brilliant soundtrack and a lean running time at under 2 hours .

However my primary criticism is that the film is almost wholly a work of fiction .
Its historically 80% inaccurate I'd say ,too much has been changed or fabricated .

I agree, entertaining and good acting. But enormity of the historical inaccuracies everywhere in the film undermine the whole thing.

Shiraz 4.99 wrote: »

I thought this started strongly, nobody does Charles Dance like Charles Dance.

Hard to know where to begin with the history comparison, but Charles Dance's portrayal of Denniston stood out like a sore thumb. Good acting all the same.

They make him out be merely a military bureaucrat managing a bunch of "eggheads" who's work he cannot comprehend fully.
In reality he had been a cryptologist himself in WW1. He was the one who actually sought out Turing and other skilled mathematicians BEFORE the war, knowing what was coming and the skills that would be needed.

And of course, without causing a spoiler, the "spy". In reality the government had no knowledge of his spying until the 1950s. And there's also no evidence that he ever met Turing.

12-03-2015 3:04pm

Threw this one earlier today as I had two hours to kill and really left cold by what I saw. It's a worthy film, of that there is no doubt but it's far too familiar and I really can't see how it would have worked on a big screen. It looks and feels like a Bank Holiday BBC made for TV film and as such went through the motions.

There's a real safeness to events, they're told from such a hands off approach that one could go so far as to call it clinical. Performances are rather good all round but bar Turing we never get to know any of the others which is frustrating when you consider that the dynamic between the group is the films most interesting element. I'm surprised that the script was so well received given that it feels like a best of True Life Tales from the past decade package with some dreadfully trite dialogue and the kind of motivational speeches that would have felt cheesy in Rocky V. Knightley in particular was undeserved by a one dimensional character and some dialogue that just felt forced and unnatural.

The whole Russian spy angle was like so much else in the film introduced and then went nowhere, I would have liked to see a little more about it and how it was manipulated by MI6 to help turn the tides of war. The rigid nature of how the film is told really robs Turing of anything resembling the brilliance he had, here he comes across as a rather sad and lonely figure whose only goal in life is to build a robot friend so as to replace that single friend he had as a child. It's a dynamic and interesting spin on a story well told but thanks to the rather workmanlike direction and the dull, cliche riddled script it really never amounts to anything. And like so many other bio pics The Imitation Game ends with another God awful text epilogue, the kind that's so forcefully worthy that you can't help but roll your eyes.

The Imitation Game isn't a bad film, it's just so middle of the road and familiar that even those who have never heard of Turing or the Enigma project could guess where the film is going from the opening minutes. As a made for TV project it would make for perfectly harmless time killer but considering the talent and acclaim the film garnered one can't but be left disappointed by it.

The Strawman Argument · 12-03-2015 5:15pm

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm surprised that the script was so well received given that it feels like a best of True Life Tales from the past decade package with some dreadfully trite dialogue and the kind of motivational speeches that would have felt cheesy in Rocky V.

Agreed, thought it was a shocking script that managed to both understate and overstate the achievements of Turing and Bletchley Park.
Turing was arguably long overdue a Hollywoodified film about his life, I'd have to imagine there were scripts written that were both more faithful and less generic than what we got here. It really seemed like yer man the scriptwriter only ever read in any serious manner about Turing while researching for his script, forcing in pieces of his life into a structure he'd already decided on.

The eureka moment in particular pissed me off to no end, I felt as though it was something chosen because it'd be so simple that any idiot watching could understand what was going on but even then I felt it went wayyyyyy overboard, could be hugely off there, mind.
...and what the f*ck was that "MY BROTHER'S ON THAT BOAT" ****e in there for, it was ridiculous and added absolutely nothing to the scene, especially since that dude hardly spoke beforehand.

fryup · 31-07-2016 11:29pm

Just watched it on channel 4, brilliant movie thoroughly enjoyed it

btw - does it differ much from the kate winslet movie enigma ??

constitutionus · 01-08-2016 5:09pm

ditto.

thought it was brilliant. very enjoyable watch.

its on again on RTE this wed for those that missed it on C4

philstar · 05-08-2016 8:55pm

brilliant film, well acted by all involved

'The Imitation Game' (Bletchley Park) 2014

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