Operation Mincemeat is a present to storytellers. It’s a minor however important chapter of World Struggle II that would appear far-fetched if it wasn’t, in truth, precise historical past: sure, the British authorities did as soon as take the corpse of a homeless man, gown him in an officer’s uniform, fill his pockets with pretend paperwork (together with a love letter from a fictitious sweetheart, full with backstory) and hope to tug the wool over the Nazi’s eyes. It’s a tantalising premise that demonstrates the lengths the Allies have been prepared to go: excessive stakes, combined with excessive farce.
John Madden’s movie properly balances the continuing grief and trauma of a brutal warfare with wealthy interval particulars and even a modest sense of enjoyable. When it actually pops, the entire thing unfurls virtually like a caper by means of Ealing Studios, because the group — led by three enjoyably dry turns from Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly Macdonald — meticulously plan out each eventuality, advert absurdum. (A scene the place Firth makes an attempt to {photograph} a corpse sitting upright is morbidly humorous.)
This can be a British movie to its tea-soaked core.
That audacious tone is helped by the enjoyable footnote that the operation was probably the brainchild of a younger Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), whose style for espionage would later gas his James Bond novels, and understandably, the movie can’t resist just a few sly nods-and-winks to 007’s future.
However the crackling tempo is considerably interrupted by a soapy love triangle between the three leads, which feels barely shoehorned in, with chemistry that by no means totally materialises. Maybe it’s as a result of each higher lip right here is resolutely stiff: it is a British movie to its tea-soaked core, and whereas which will lose it a little bit of cinematic ambition (Madden additionally directed each Greatest Unique Marigold Lodge movies, which hints on the audience right here), it’s an undeniably rousing watch, even in its highest moments of drama: destined to change into a Financial institution Vacation staple.
