Director: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kiera Knightley, Matthew Goode
My Rating: Loved It!!
The Imitation Game is one of the most captivating movies I've seen in 2014. The story is an incredibly important and interesting one, but the way the story is spun and edited draws the viewer in like few other movies can.
It's about Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician, as he tries to crack the nazi enigma code, a code that, if broken, would allow them to intercept and translate all German communications. Alan Turing and his crew cracking the enigma code is one of the main reasons that the Axis powers lost WWII. The movie is also simultaneously about Alan Turing having to keep secret that he was a homosexual, during a time when homosexuals were sentenced to prison for indecency.
The film hops around to three specific times in Turing's life: as a young middle schooler figuring out who he is and what he is good at, as a mid-twentysomething while he is cracking the enigma code, and at the end of his life after he has been ordered by the court to take hormone pills because of his homosexuality. The film hops from one to another to great effect. One example is: once the viewer figures out he is gay, the movie goes back to when he was a kid and experiencing these feelings for the first time. It's because of this that the movie has a very brisk pace and is always interesting. And the dialogue is always quick and witty a lot of the time, keeping the viewer on their toes.
The acting by Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely top-notch, and is probably the best performance I've seen all year. He has my vote for best actor and The Imitation Game absolutely should be up for best picture. "Sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."