The Imitation Game

Well we are smack dab in the middle of Oscar season which means you need to prepare yourself for a ton of sappy movies that will be full of long gazes and slow tears that take place high in the mountains somewhere. It's almost become a predictable formula at this point "You went full retard man! Never go full retard!" Kirk Lazarus. I seriously almost didn't see The Imitation Game because it looked to follow the same formula that all old people love these days and that's have a quirky introvert who turns out to be a misunderstood savant that eventually gets the love and respect of his peers. And since there are nothing but old people on the award committees, I knew this movie would be all over the Golden Globes and Oscar ceremonies this year, so I loaded up on sleep beforehand and forced myself to see it.

The Imitation Game is about English mathematician Alan Turing(Benedict Cumberbatch) and his enlisting in the British secret intelligence agency to help crack the code of Enigma during World War II. The Germans were using what appeared to be an unbreakable code to communicate to one another their plans of attack on their enemies and because of its effectiveness they were winning the war and spreading their terror throughout all of Europe. The Allies needed someone to break this code that changed daily to help turn the tide, so they reluctantly turned to Turing and his innovative ideas to do so.

Turing had the idea of building a digital thinking machine that would be designed to not only help crack this code but help revolutionize the way humans would go about solving all of our problems. The issue was that Turing had zero social skills and as a result rubbed everyone he ran into the wrong way. So people doubted and hated him at every turn, including the team that was attempting to work with him to solve Enigma. It wasn't until he met the sharp and beautiful Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) that he was able to find some common ground with his comrades and eventually make progress.

Thankfully though there was a bit more to this movie than I originally thought. This movie is as much about Turing himself as it is the race against time to stop the Germans and their vicious attacks. You get an in depth look into what made Turing the social weirdo that he was and how it affected him later on in life. The problem is, Turing's life and background wasn't really all that interesting. Sure there was more to him than you initially think and he had a few secrets that could hurt the progress of the mission but it's nothing we haven't seen or heard before. As a matter of fact, after you find out his predictable secrets, you simply wished that they had glossed over it with a quick monologue and focused more on how Enigma affected specific battles in the war. I wanted more blood!

Cumberbatch and his performance is the only reason to see this movie but even then I'd suggest passing on it to see something that doesn't have you checking out your Instagram mid movie. I rate this movie as pretty WEAK!