 Tagline: Unlock the secret, win the war In The Imitation Game, Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, the genius British mathematician, logician, cryptologist and computer scientist who led the charge to crack the German Enigma Code that helped the Allies win WWII. Turing went on to assist with the development of computers at the University of Manchester after the war, but was prosecuted by the UK government in 1952 for homosexual acts which the country deemed illegal. Storyline: Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. Written by Studio Canal Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, March 20, 2015 -- One's mental image of the act of waging war certainly brings to mind depictions of bombs, bullets, and bloodied soldiers. It also conjures up images of commanding officers dutifully drawing up plans for battle and rallying men to the cause. It perhaps even recalls depictions of men and women waging the war of information and ideas, the behind-the-scenes propaganda machine meant to both rally support at home and instill fear and doubt abroad. But the last one -- the battle of ideas -- sometimes extends well beyond posters and radio messages and drives straight to the heart of the war, where a battle may not be won or lost or a life saved or destroyed but where, behind closed doors and far away from the front, the tide slowly turns with the churning of minds and the development and deployment of ideas, ideas that can have as large an impact as any bomb or bullet-pointed presentation that's spells out a way to win the war. The Imitation Game tells the remarkable true story of one man's devotion to the cause of breaking enemy codes and, while not engaging directly in battle, seeing his handiwork at home serve as a key turning point in the war. But the film also depicts that same man's struggles not with who he is but how he is perceived and the war waged against him both overtly and covertly in response to not just his socially wayward ways but also the social stigma of his homosexuality. Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a 27-year-old prodigy who is also a homosexual, is recruited to work at Bletchley Radio Manufacturing where he's to covertly crack the secret of the German Enigma coding machine that sends indecipherable signals in the open. Even as the allies have secured one of the devices, it's proving impossible to work, requiring as many as 159 million-million-million permutations to break a code that's changed on a daily basis. Alan believes he's up to the challenge, but at the same time he expresses his displeasure with his colleagues, refusing to cooperate and working in solitude -- as much solitude as he can find, anyway -- on a machine that stands a better chance of deciphering the code than the human mind, at least in the time available. After penning a letter to Winston Churchill himself, Alan secures the finds necessary to construct his machine. He's also placed in charge of the group and promptly fires two of his team which only further distances himself from the remaining men. He seeks to refill the ranks through a sly newspaper recruiting effort that lands him Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a woman who is, like Alan, highly intelligent and driven but pushed away, not because of social waywardness or sexuality but rather her gender. As they work to break the code, Alan is forced to interact with others and face a number of additional challenges, related to war and to himself, along the way to allied victory in Europe. The Imitation Game does a fine job at spelling out the basics -- why breaking the code is important, how it can and will be achieved, the technical trials, failures, and successes of the operation -- but the film is much larger than a simple dramatization of how a collected group of individuals traveled from point A, working with supposedly indecipherable codes, to point B, breaking the codes and dealing with the consequences not of putting the information to use but rather how to strike that perfect balance between all but openly acknowledging their success and thereby destroying the effort or surreptitiously deploying the intelligence to gain the upper hand. Through these scenes, to which the film does dedicate the bulk of its screen time, it finds a dazzlingly consistent pace and sense of immersion into the code breaking world. But it's beyond all of that where the film truly shines, finds its purpose, and explores an even more interesting angle. More so than a portrait of behind-the-scenes warfare, The Imitation Game paints a portrait of a man, one of the most complex characters ever depicted on the screen. Alan Turing is an eccentric man, obsessive compulsive in his daily routine, and a social pariah. But he's quick-witted, capable of playing the back-and-forth game and exposing weakness and unbalance even in casual conversation, speaking directly without much of a filter. That plays an interesting contrast against, but also sets a foundation for, his love for puzzles and ability to understand them, decipher them, and ultimately build a machine to do the job of breaking them with a speed and efficiency many degrees of magnitude more quickly than even the sharpest human mind. Yet he can barely carry on a mundane conversation about what he wants for lunch and whether he'd like to join his co-workers for a bite to eat. He refuses to place himself on a pedestal -- he's "barely making par" next to great minds like Newton and Einstein -- and he seems to enjoy both playing down to his audience and build up beyond their level. He slowly grows more accustomed to working with others, but doing so forces him to face a number of realities about who he is, what he does, what he is capable of doing, and how he has done it. By the end, it all seems to come back to his sexuality. The Imitation Game doesn't allow the issue of Turing's homosexuality to devour the film, but it does define much of it, particularly late in the film once it largely takes center stage. He's far more progressive than many in his circle -- a circle he'd admittedly rather see closed, or eliminated altogether, rather than expanded -- which allows him to look past Joan's gender when she proves herself more capable than anyone else in the room. The film is often more overt with her character as it depicts, first, a reluctance (not on Alan's part) to even admit that she could be a candidate for the program based solely on her gender and, later, when her parents disapprove of the idea of her working with men when she's unmarried and, presumably, a better fit for a lesser job, one that fits the mold of a traditional female role. The movie does, then, play with some ideas on acceptance and looking beyond the surface, and even as these are critical parts of defining the greater story, they're mildly underplayed in a way that allows them to gently support the greater arcs, not define them, even as they become key parts in the larger whole. What truly sells the movie, however, is Benedict Cumberbatch in what is a deservedly Oscar nominated performance of one of the most interestingly complex characters ever to appear on screen. Cumberbatch's Turing is a unique individual, certainly not a Raymond and not even quite so socially handicapped as Adrian Monk. No, Cumberbatch is challenged with building a much more inwardly complex individual whose exterior is certainly defined by who he is on the inside -- which the film smartly comes to fully define in a number of carefully inserted, short, but crucial flashbacks to his youth -- but who must still operate on some level of confidence in the social arena, an arena into which he enters more for the challenge of the code rather than as a challenge to his reclusive personality, which he holds close and in high regard. He slowly seems to exit his shell as he realizes he both needs others at his side and seems to even come to appreciate their company and contributions, yet in a critical scene late in the film, all of his growth comes crashing down around him when he admits to manipulating a situation for the betterment of his project rather than as a true opening of his heart or as a compassionate response to another's feelings. It's the best, and most heartbreaking, moment in the movie that fully defines the Turing character better than all of the wonderful bits of Cumberbatch's performance that both come before and come after. The Imitation Game deals with a complex problem and, at the same time, deals with complex people. This is a brilliant film on a number of levels, including its base story of World War II code breakers but much more satisfying the life and journey of one of the most complicated figures ever to be depicted on the screen. Benedict Cumberbatch's performance is extraordinarily deep, nailing the superficialities but building the character from the inside out. He's certainly aided by a tight, detailed, and richly written script, but this is Cumberbatch's movie and what is sure to be one of the defining moments of his career, if not his finest hour. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of The Imitation Game features perfect video, superb audio, and a few supplements. Very highly recommended. [CSW] -4.2- The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely each answer resembles the answer a human would give. -- The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words." Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think". -- In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticised, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. His test has come to be referred to with Turing's name. In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticised, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. His test has come to be referred to with Turing's name. Cast Notes: Benedict Cumberbatch (Alan Turing), Keira Knightley (Joan Clarke), Matthew Goode (Hugh Alexander), Rory Kinnear (Detective Robert Nock), Allen Leech (John Cairncross), Matthew Beard (Peter Hilton), Charles Dance (Commander Denniston), Mark Strong (Stewart Menzies), James Northcote (Jack Good), Tom Goodman-Hill (Sergeant Staehl), Steven Waddington (Superintendent Smith), Ilan Goodman (Keith Furman), Jack Tarlton (Charles Richards), Alex Lawther (Young Alan Turing), Jack Bannon (Christopher Morcom). IMDb Rating (03/17/15): 7.6/10 from 223,628 users
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