A disparate set of mismatched components stitched together to form a coherent whole. That’s either a description of the machine at the heart of this worthy biopic or a loose critique of Headhunters director Morten Tyldum’s examination of one of history’s most overlooked heroes. It is in fact both.
Even if you’re not au fait when it comes to your WWII trivia, most people have heard of the Enigma machine, a Nazi coding device used to send wartime communication to the evil spreading its doctrine of hate and murder across a crumbling Europe. The smartest minds couldn’t decipher the machine, one which self corrected every 24 hours in order to reset its own rules. Everyone except the remarkable mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Obtuse and unable to connect with those around him, Turing nevertheless had a beautiful mind, one which made the military’s reluctance to take him on a moot point.
His team, who he was allowed to hand pick after writing a letter to Winston Churchill, despised his methods and personality, with Matthew Goode’s Hugh Alexander taking particular chagrin to his painstaking work methods.
