Benedict Cumberbatch stars as cryptanalyst Alan Turing, who decrypted German intelligence codes for the British government during World War II and this movie is based around his efforts to decode the Enigma machine developed by the Nazis for use during the war. Cumberbatch plays the arrogant but socially awkward mathematician brilliantly without ever feeling like he is playing such a similar character to Sherlock that they could be intertwined in parts. He is ably supported by Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke who bonds with Cumberbatch since both are playing central roles with hidden traits, Turing through his sexuality and Clarke as a woman in a man world where sexism is unheard of as yet.

Very reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind in parts both in terms of the plot and the feel of the movie. The flashbacks to Turings time in Boarding school, while trying to give come backstory into the development of the man, took away from the pacing of the movie and while playing up his sexuality the fact that the movie shows no real inkling of this in Turing’s adult life makes it a bit of a moot point. Also the script felt like it was trying to be a bit over clever with the use of Mark Strong as the MI6 agent Stewart Menzies throwing twist and double twist at Turing throughout the film which, with so many of the best brains in the country in the room, was a bit of a stretch to fathom that nobody else may have been on the same playing field as him.

While it should not stop you watching, or enjoying the movie, all the focus is on the attempts to break the code with very little on the private life of Turing who potentially saved millions of lives with the work his team carried out but who was also vilified for his homosexual activity leading to a jail conviction which was only avoided by agreeing to undergo chemical castration through the use of Diethylstilbestrol to cure his ‘condition’ which lead to him committing suicide in 1954. All of this was hidden as classified information for almost fifty years before he was pardoned by the Queen in 2013. It would have been nice to find out a bit more about the man as much as it focused on his legacy.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 out of 10