The Imitation Game: A Review (And Pan)

BAIT AND SWITCH, HOLLYWOOD STYLE

Okay, okay.  The Ostrich Killer is no movie critic, and yes I should stop doing movie reviews.  I get it, believe me.  

But this movie really, really got to me.  I'm furious over the $8.50 I had to spend to see it, but at least I had sense enough to not buy popcorn or anything else.  Thank goodness I'm such a tightwad!

Rarely does a movie come along these days that promises to be actually interesting and have a significant story to tell.  So when I saw that this particular movie was up for a number of academy awards and was to portray Britain's struggle to break the Enigma code, I was hooked.  Hey, this might actually be good!  

But I forgot:  Nothing out of Hollywood is actually good.  The vast majority of it is swill with agendas buried in the stories like Trojan viruses embedded in computer code.

Hollywood didn't bother to hide the code in this movie; no, instead they waited until more than halfway through it to reveal it to the viewing audience, a bunch of frogs in a slowly heating pot of water.

The story became one of homosexual persecution in wartime and early post-war Britain, and how it led to Alan Turing's suicide.  It also mentioned how important his work had been.

This despite almost three years ago, serious doubt was raised that he had actually committed suicide.  Doubt aside and apparently irrelevant, the movie unequivocally says he did.  Clearly, they speak from better knowledge than forensic investigators.

I wouldn't have paid good money to go see a movie that tells the story of homosexual persecution in Britain.  Would you?  No?  Well, they knew that.  So they put together a compelling history and used that as the vehicle to tell it to you anyway.  After all, it's a story you need to know, right?

To be fair, a close reading of reviews would have shown that this story was likely to contain some homosexual content.  So that's on me; normally I would have read those reviews.  But this story - the breaking of Enigma - about homosexual persecution???  Only Hollywood.  It's getting to the point where it's hard to find a movie that does NOT contain homosexual content.

Wonderful.  Terrific family stuff.

Does anything coming out of Hollywood bear watching these days?  I thought maybe Interstellar might be fun.  But no.  Hollywood had to re-invent physics to tell the story.  Ugh.  Where are the Moby Dicks of today?  The Ben Hurs?  Robert Redford did us all a favor with All is Lost, but don't hold your breath waiting for any other Hollywood screenwriters to try this sort of thing.  

I look forward to In the Heart of the Sea, which advertises that it is a true story.  I've read the book.  Herman Melville was inspired by this story to write Moby Dick.  It is grisly beyond compare, and the book was just an accounting of events.  I wonder if Hollywood will content itself with telling this compelling tale in the same manner?

I seriously doubt it.  But we shall see.  But you can be sure your Ostrich Killer will read the reviews first.  I'm tired of being baited and switched, and do not aspire to being frog-boiled again.

It's too late for coffee.  There's a cold beer left on the front porch.  I think I'll go rescue it.