The Imitation Game (Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Mathew Goode) – He’s everywhere! Benedict Cumberbatch is an outstanding actor who broods as well as any British actor. Like The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game honors genius, presenting mathematician Alan Turing as a brilliant, socially-inept loner in quest of inventing a machine that will think for itself and break the Nazi code circa 1940. He and his team labor in secret at a radio factory under the auspices of Britain’s MI-6.
Based on the true story of his life, Turing is obsessed with his invention, refusing to try to break the so-called Enigma code the old-fashioned way – using brainpower, pencil, and logic. – much to the chagrin of his team of code-breakers. He realizes that, to break the Code, he needs to be able to compute an almost unlimited number of calculations.
Played by Cumberbatch, whose filmography includes major roles in 12 Years A Slave, The Fifth Estate (as Julian Assange), two Hobbit films and TV’s Sherlock Holmes, Turing is special, unique, anti-social, troubled, haunted, and aloof. Only Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), the lone female member of his team, gives him calm and intellectual challenge. She is way ahead of her time – confident, professional, brilliant – and she idolizes Turing. His interest is her is platonic; hers is intellectual.
The film tells the story of the creation of super-computing capacity and artificial intelligence. It doesn’t shy away from presaging the notion that a machine may one day “think” faster and even better than a human, just in a different way. In war, however, that moral dilemma is virtually irrelevant.
Though essentially a character study, The Imitation Game manages to create drama in the team’s quest to crack the Enigma Code. Cumberbatch’s performance is brilliant and memorable. He should get an Oscar nomination although it pales compared to Eddie Redmayne’s in The Theory of Everything.
The Imitation Game is a solid slice of history told in an entertaining way that should be on every serious moviegoer’s playlist.