Turing was brilliant and so is Cumberbatch's performance, during which he ages from 25 to 41, lacks people skills to such a degree that he sets an Olympic record for self-absorption, and seems to be situating himself somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum.Īnd Keira Knightley contributes another assured and impressive performance as fellow code-breaker Joan Clarke, the only woman on an otherwise all-male team, also supremely intelligent but much more socially adjusted than Turing, to whom she is briefly engaged.Īnd they are complemented and supported by an excellent supporting ensemble that includes Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Matthew Beard, and Allen Leech. The title, by the way, is derived from Turing's proposal that a so-called imitation game be employed as a means of investigating whether or not machines might one day be said to imitate humans and 'think.' 'Sometimes,' repeats the otherwise crackerjack screenplay one too many times, 'it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.' Norwegian director Morten Tyldum ( Headhunters, Fallen Angels), in his first English-language film, works from a script by first-timer Graham Moore that's based on Andrew Hodges' 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, which was also the basis for Hugh Whitemore's 1986 play, 'Breaking the Code.' So it would obviously be a very long time until the record would be set straight, although no one would have guessed that it would take quite this many years.īut not only was his part in the cessation of the war more or less taken for granted during the conflict - with much of his work remaining classified for decades thereafter –- but in 1952 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' for the crime of being homosexual. Ironically, though, after their game-changing breakthrough, Turing's team must keep their accomplishment hidden lest the Germans find out that their secret transmissions are being intercepted. Turing's efforts essentially stopped the Nazis' path through Europe, helping to win the war and save millions upon millions of lives.

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