What’s this? The true story of Cambridge University mathematician and know-it-all Alan Turing – played as an arrogant but likeable wunderkind by Benedict Cumberbatch – working with a tiny team of crossword enthusiasts in the countryside to crack the Enigma code used by the Germans in World War II.
‘We’re going to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war,’ they say, and then they do. The upsetting twist is that afterwards, Turing was convicted of gross indecency after having a homosexual relationship, which was illegal at the time, and treated so terribly that he committed suicide by cyanide poisoning in 1954.
Who else is in it? After solving an almost impossible crossword and joining his team of code-breakers at Bletchley Park, Keira Knightley plays the Dr Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes; the two of them converse in clipped and jolly posh English and even embark on an unlikely romance. Dashing chess champion Matthew Goode helps them out, and one of his attempted flirtations in the village pub helps to save the world. Charles Dance, who plays nasty patriarch Tywin Lannister in Game Of Thrones, plays the nasty military man who wants to shut down their machine.
READ MORE: Before Toy Story 4, We're Going To Need Some Answers To These Questions
Who was supposed to be in it? Originally the lead was to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio, but sadly he dropped out of the project, possibly to spend more time having happy water-fights, and dancing at festivals, and cheering on Orlando Bloom as he fights Justin Bieber.
**What happens, in a Tweet? ** A grumpy Cumberbatch stumbles around his Enigma machine quietly inventing the modern world with Keira. It's Sherlock meets Brideshead Revisited.
**What are the other critics saying? ** According to Ben Walters in The Guardian, ‘It goes out of its way to praise odd fish. In fact, by spotlighting Turing’s abnormality, celebrating it, and making clear its inalienability from his sexuality, it could be the queerest thing to hit the multiplex in ages.’
READ MORE: Why You Need To See Keira Knightley And Chloe Grace Moretz In Say When
What are we saying? It’s a very British, very stirring movie about a team of good-looking geeks in tweed suits and cardigans making an amazing machine that changed our world, and in more ways than one. Highly enjoyable, and it has an inspiring idea at its heart: ‘It is precisely the people that no-one imagined anything of, who do the things that no-one can imagine.’
Is it a happily ever after? Not at all. However, in 2009 our then-Prime-Minister Gordon Brown issued an official public apology to Alan Turing on behalf of the British government, and on Christmas Eve of 2013 the Queen granted him a posthumous pardon, too.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
Carrie Will Finally Simmer Down And Other Hopes We Can Expect From Sex And The City 3
Kaya Scodelario: I Look Back At Skins And Think 'Oh God I Was 14....'
Follow Dean on Twitter @DeanKissick
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.