Plot Summary – Alan Turing, a British mathematician, joins the cryptography team to decipher the German enigma code. With the help of his fellow mathematicians, he builds a machine to crack the codes.

★★½ 

Watched 17 Dec, 2020

This could’ve been a masterpiece but in the end it was just way too safe and inconsequential. It had a certain emptiness and lack of anything new that made it feel like your typical Oscar-bait flick. I really wanted to like this movie because

A) I love benedict Cumberbatch

B) I am a Computer Science student and this film is literally about the invention of computers and

C) It was called “The Imitation Game”, which is the name of the Turing Test, which is used to this day to determine whether an AI is strong or not.

I thought this would have a deep character study or a philosophical discussion on the ethics of artificial intelligence which is something Turing was really interested in. But sadly, this film characterizes Turing as a bunch of ‘smart-nerd’ stereotypes and rarely goes deeper than the surface level. Looking at the positives, Cumberbatch gives a great performance and he carries this film. The score is absolutely riveting and Desplat really shows that he’s a master of this art. Some scenes really do invoke emotions in me and this is a fairly enjoyable watch but I saw so much potential and had such high expectation for this film and it fell flat in my opinion.