Excellent true-life drama about a brilliant gay mathematician, Alan Turing, who joins a team of encryption experts that is attempting to break the Nazi Enigma code and perhaps save millions of lives during World War II.  The film tactfully and elegantly presents Touring’s conflict of being a homosexual in a world that is extremely hostile to gays. The movie also scores when it’s true to its inherently geeky nature by delivering the fascinating technical details of the Enigma effort. As Turing, actor Benedict Cumberbatch gives an outstanding performance in a role he seems to have been born for, exuding sensitivity and soulfulness sometimes, diffidence and superiority at others. The actor who plays Turing’s younger version, a boarding school child, also provides an intense and sensitive portrait. However, the movie is a little too slick for its own good, a conventional Hollywood-style approach that tries to deliver something for everyone—a few war action scenes, some typical characters, the usual sprinkling of dramatic notes and suspense.  The film accomplishes the purpose of the filmmakers, which apparently was to take some touchy and technical subjects and make an “entertaining” mainstream movie out of them. But they could have done away with some of those conventions and focused more on Turing and his struggles, especially by adding more content about his life post-Enigma. As it is, his life after the war is little more than a footnote, and we’re not nearly as invested emotionally as we could have been given the nature of the story. A very good movie, but it could have been one of the greats.

Not for Kids

Extras:

• A vulgar and unnecessary verbal joke takes the movie a notch down, and it keeps the film from being something that can be shared with older kids like teens.
• Time for one of my pet peeves: CGI. You can see that so much money and effort is spent on a production like this; why can’t they just fly a few old-looking war planes? Why do they have to use CGI every time they possibly can? Reminds me of the old days when they used miniatures (like the miniature battle ships in a water tank for the 1961 version of “Ben Hur“) and you had to go along with it and imagine you were watching the real thing. Same with most CGI; you have to suspend belief and say to yourself, that’s CGI, but I’m going to pretend it isn’t.