Review #876: 'The Imitation Game' (2014)

Benedict Cumberbatch seems to be making a career out of playing troubled and flawed geniuses, following his huge success as Sherlock Holmes in the TV series Sherlock and the upcoming - and hugely exciting - Dr. Strange in Marvel's upcoming film based on the sorcerer supreme. His finest work so far is in The Imitation Game as code-breaker Alan Turing, the unsung war hero who helped crack the apparently unbreakable Enigma machine used by the Germans during World War II, helping to save millions of lives in the process and shaving years off the war.

Turing was recognised as a prodigy from an extremely young age, and his cerebral superiority isolated him from others. He travels to Beltchley Park, where Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) interviews him as part of a recruitment process to form a cryptology team headed by chess champion Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode), tasked to break the Enigma code. Turing gets the job through sheer intellectual brilliance, but not through his condescending personality, which instantly puts him at odds with the rigid and impatient Denniston. When he joins the team, which also consists of John Cairncross (Allen Leech) and Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard), he wastes no time in voicing his desire to work alone and dismisses the input of the others as simple time-wasting.

Director Morten Tyldum and writer Graham Moore have not created a work of any great intelligence or subtlety here, and The Imitation Game plays very much by the standard biopic rule book. No great care goes into helping us understand the inner workings of the Enigma itself, or the work done by Turing and his fellow code-breakers, and the film very much relies on great acting and a fast pace. The scenes with Turing, Alexander et al hard at work has them with sleeves rolled-up and chewing pencils whilst staring at boards. We don't quite know what they're doing, but we are certainly urging them to achieve their goal, and, of course, this being a film about Turing, there's only so much of his work that can be squeezed into two hours.

The Imitation Game also helps make the story relevant to the modern day. At the beginning of the film, set after the war, Turing is burgled and his flippant dismissal of the investigating Detective Nock (Rory Kinnear) puts him under suspicion. He is arrested for participating in lurid acts with a man, a crime punishable by up to two years in prison back then. It all ties in nicely with the recent official apology from Gordon Brown, then-prime minister in 2009, and his official pardon by the Queen in 2014. Flashbacks of Turing's early childhood at a boarding school and his relationship with close friend Christopher Morcom (Jack Bannon) are peppered throughout. They help gain an understanding of Turing's love of cryptology and his emerging sexuality, and these scenes are finely played by the young Alex Lawther and do in no way hinder the flow of the film.

But the film's trump card is undoubtedly Cumberbatch. Although his delivery at times can border on stage-y, he has a great weight to his voice. His face exudes such intelligence and charisma that you just want to pick it apart to see what's under there. Keira Knightley too, who I haven't even mentioned yet, is a surprise revelation as Joan Clarke, a fellow prodigy puzzle-solver who, being a woman, had to be hidden away as regulations didn't permit women positions of worthy status. She is fierce and full of life, the polar opposite to the withdrawn and work-focused Turing. Yet the two develop an intriguing and entirely convincing platonic love affair, leading to their short-lived engagement in 1941. It's covered with a thin layer of gloss and a longer running time with more careful story development would have been beneficial, but The Imitation Game is consistently thrilling and engaging, bolstered by a great ensemble.


Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance, Mark Strong
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #738: 'Watchmen' (2009)

Bringing Alan Moore's cerebral and sprawling novel to the screen was always going to a near-impossible task. It's very much an anti-superhero story, where the 'heroes' are merciless psychopaths, government weapons of mass destruction, or sexually impotent. Spanning decades and featuring snippets from books, comics and newspaper reports within the world Moore creates, any film adaptation simply could not match the level of details and authenticity of the much-lauded novel. Zack Snyder, a fan of the original, and a director who was just off the back of the surprisingly excellent Dawn of the Dead (2004) and the shouty, crass 300 (2006), puts all of his heart and soul into Watchmen.

Using a no-name cast, a convoluted and dangerously slow story, and an adult rating thanks to all those snapped bones and a massive blue willy, it's a wonder this ever got made at all. It was in development hell for years, with names such as Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass becoming attached and then quickly detached from the project, and even the nerve-jangling possibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the movie's only true superhero was banded around in the mid 1990's. It's almost impossible to think of a more faithful adaptation than Snyder's, often re-creating frames from the comic in the minutest of detail, and even including Tales from the Black Freighter, the comic-within-a-comic from the novel with the voice of Gerard Butler (this is a review of the 215-minute cut, which I feel is the best version out there). Yet, you could still argue that Moore's book is un-filmable.

The 1980's, and President Nixon is running his fourth term in office, and superheroes have been outlawed. Ageing government assassin The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former member of two superhero groups named the Minutemen, is murdered in his home. Vigilante and wanted man Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) investigates the murder, and brings his theory that someone is hunting down retired superheroes to his friend and former partner Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), formerly known as Nite Owl. With the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets becoming frequently more inevitable, heads turn to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a neo-God with the ability to bend matter to his will. But when he learns that he may have given his friends and loved ones cancer, he flees to Mars, leaving the world vulnerable to complete annihilation.

The Watchmen world is thick and meaty, re-writing history as if masked heroes and super-villains actually existed. In the film's opening titles, we are treated to an impressive collage of famous historical events, such as the Moon landing, but here it's Dr. Manhattan photographing Neil Armstrong. It's a hell of a lot of back-story to fill in, and the movie spends most of it's time filling in the gaps between the 1940's and the 1980's. Luckily, the characters Alan Moore wrote so beautifully, are fascinating, and the extended segments dedicated to portray their personal evolution are arguably more interesting than the movie's main plot. These are not flawed superheroes like Batman or Wolverine, they are complete fuck-ups, getting sexual stimulation from violence, battering minor offenders to a bloody pulp, or, in Dr. Manhattan's case, literally losing every trace of his humanity.

Moore's novel made them a parody of the idea of masked superheroes protecting the weak. The Comedian especially is a piece of work, gleefully frying a Viet Cong with a flame thrower, while a giant Dr. Manhattan stalks the jungle vaporising any enemies in his way, helicopters whizzing by his head while 'Ride of the Valkyries' plays. Like with 300, Snyder way overplays it. The comic itself wasn't exactly subtle, but Watchmen the movie amps everything up to 11, and while this admittedly makes the film more exciting, it makes the themes heavy-handed and sometimes plain laughable. Dreiberg can only get it up for the Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) after he's murdered some criminals, but when he finally does, Snyder captures it like a soft-core porn movie starring Shannon Tweed, with the cringe-worthy use of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' in the background. In fact, the entire soundtrack feels as if it's been picked by some stoner student with Jimi Hendrix posters on his wall.

It's no surprise that, after a very successful opening week, Watchmen plummeted once word-of-mouth got around. Audiences drawn in by the possibility of another superhero spectacle were no doubt left baffled by the existential musings of it's characters and the extreme darkness of the film's themes. Perhaps it was what the film deserved, as when it's good, it's the work of a true artist, and when it's bad, it's quite embarrassing. But it's the best that us fans are likely to ever get, and we must be thankful that a director who really knows and loves the source was on board, and insistent that it wasn't destroyed by the studio butchers. Snyder has also rounded up an excellent cast, with Haley and Crudup standing out especially (Akerman suffers from some dodgy delivery occasionally but she sure pulls off that costume). It will continue to divide it's viewers, but it'll be somewhat cherished by it's fans.


Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Carla Gugino, Gerard Butler
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #103: 'A Single Man' (2009)

This haunting film directed by fashion designer Tom Ford shows the pontentially final day in the life of English teacher George Falconer (Colin Firth). Lonely and in mourning after losing the love of his life, Jim (Matthew Goode), in a car crash eight months earlier, George reflects on his life and throughout the day comes across various people who all see the sadness within him. These include pupil Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), who is seemingly fascinated with George, his old friend Charley (Julianne Moore) who may have a doomed love for him, and a Spanish immigrant and gigolo Carlos (Jon Kortajarena). Unknown to them, George is carefully planning his suicide.

Being directed by a highly-successful fashion designer who owns his own label as well as managing to revamp Gucci, the film looks as impeccable and polished as one of his famous suits. A Single Man is directed with an unnerving confidence for a newcomer, and makes the most out of its 1960's setting. George is a rather wealthy man, and as he fiddles around his large, modern house in all its fastidious neatness, Ford manages to create a feeling of both beauty and style, mixed with emptiness and loneliness. As fantastic as this film looks, it never loses its grip on the story, and all the long slow-motion shots of George reflecting or driving his car allows you to really grasp the hole in his heart.

Firth is outstanding. For all the recognition he got The King's Speech (2010), his performance here blows it out the water. I've never really understood the mass appeal of Firth, but watching him in the scene where he is informed about Jim's death by a family member, finding out he's not invited to the funeral, and that the majority of the family didn't even want to inform him, his embodies a mixture of British stiff-upper-lipped dignity and utter breakdown. And the scenes near to the end where he spends a night with the impressive Nicholas Hoult, he gazes upon him with a mixture of wonder and lust, and self-loathing and guilt.

My girlfriend felt it was style-over-substance, but I disagree. I feel the style was often reminiscent of high opera, where tragedy is commonplace. The slightest facial movement from Firth brought me right back into his story, when the film risked losing me. A moving, emotional, tragic, funny, and (dare I say it?) sexy film that could see the birth of an interesting filmmaker. 

Directed by: Tom Ford

Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode, Jon Kortajarena

Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie