Operation Mincemeat
Published 2022-05-20
Film info
- Title Operation Mincemeat
- Director John Madden
- Year 2021
- Run time 2hr 8m
- Genres Drama, War, History
- Tagline Deception. The greatest weapon in war.
- Cast Colin Firth
It's 1943. The Allies are determined to break Hitler's grip on occupied Europe, and plan to launch an all-out assault on Sicily; but they face an impossible challenge - how to protect the invasion force from potential annihilation. It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley to dream the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war - centred on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man. Operation Mincemeat is the extraordinary and true story of an idea that hoped to turn the tide for the Allies - taking impossibly high risks, defying logic, and testing the nerves of its creators to breaking point.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 2:23 | "The truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies." |
| 6:06 | Mark Gatiss bringing the black market cheese is fun. |
| 7:47 | A prominent lawyer going to be in charge of maritime hardware is 100% going to MI5. |
| 13:21 | Anyone with an atlas... I have an atlas but I don't know how to use it. |
| 17:11 | Must it be called the Trout Memo? |
| 25:08 | It felt like they were looking for a body too early. |
| 32:51 | Wallet litter! This guy is adorable. |
| 38:58 | "Any word from Bletchley?" Love it. |
| 44:15 | "Only someone planning to drown would use waterproof ink." |
| 50:35 | How can he get away with being Jewish and working for the Nazis? |
| 53:08 | Verisimilitude is a ridiculous word. |
| 54:45 | Ian Fleming visiting Q branch... |
| 1:07:21 | Less adorable, more manipulative now. |
| 1:20:30 | "There's a reason tall men don't serve on small submarines." |
| 1:29:46 | I feel like once you get to triple agent, you can't possibly keep your stories straight. |
| 1:41:52 | I've not heard of these anti-Nazis before, interesting. |
| 1:55:46 | I mean, they really should have hugged then, even if they are uptight military men. |
Thoughts
This is such a fascinating topic, it's a shame it's done so poorly in this movie. The pacing is really off - the first thirty minutes are bafflingly full of information and then the next ninety are so drawn out it's eye-rollingly boring. The weird moments that poke fun at Ian Fleming seem really out of place, whoever wrote this seemed to have a real vendetta against the many writers that emerged from the military in the war. It's a good cast but the love triangle at the middle of it had very little going for it - there wasn't a lot of chemistry. It was just dull and best avoided.
Rating: 1 / 5