The Imitation Game (****1/2)

THE IMITATION GAME is a marvelous film, one that grips you from beginning to end. Tightly-wound and nearly impossible to sit through in boredom, here is a movie that understands how to tell a story accurately, astutely, and beautifully.

The man is Alan Turing (played by one of our finest actors - Benedict Cumberbatch). Perhaps you haven't heard of him. It's okay, most people are likely to draw a blank. According to Winston Churchill, Turing "made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany." With a small team and little else, Turing was able to crack a Nazi cipher known as "Enigma," a machine the Germans used to conduct military strategy via radio.

The film sets up our story perfectly. We are introduced to the team, to Turing's isolation and awkwardness around social settings. We also learn that Germans alternate Enigma's settings every night at midnight. Everyday spent trying to solve the puzzle is a countdown of increasing difficulty. Alan has the theory to fight machines with machines, and devises a computer named "Christopher" to attempt to solve the German's code. Of course, being 1940's England, not much hope is placed in electronics.

The movie comes across as a fiction-pulled thriller, and by that means the film is wildly entertaining. Cumberbatch works slowly at building up Turing's loneliness, both in flashbacks and voice over, and as the final credits began to role, it was amazing to think back at all that we learned about a man that time will not soon forget. It is a masterful acting job. The same goes for Kiera Knightly, who's performance is about as honest and memorable as anything I have seen this year. Through slight mannerisms and habits, Knightly hits it out of the park as a woman who views saving the world as just another Sunday crossword puzzle.

The film also delves into Turing's later years, when he was charged with the crime of indecency as punishment for homosexuality. For the film to use it as such a main drive of the plot, his personal relationships are surprisingly lacking from the story, and only a small subplot revolving an elementary school friend even attempts to work out his emotional traumas. All the power for trying, but in many ways it felt as though this was one aspect that was toned down in order to appeal to a greater audience.

Without doubt, the world has Alan Turing to thank (a realization that comes in the film's final scene, a beautiful dialogue between Cumberbatch and Knightly). This was a movie that was quite literally being developed since the 1950's. Thank God they got it right.

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Knightly), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Original Score)