War story, but not a front line chronicle of close combat or close-enough combat. It is a back story, one of the many. But this particular film is based on fact: a group of carefully selected individuals were chosen to break the Nazi code machine, known as ENIGMA, which the Nazis considered unbreakable due to its almost infinite number of permutations.
A team was put in place outside of London at Bletchley Park, a mansion large enough to house the group behind closed walls. The team was led by Alan Turing, a mathematician. He was the mastermind behind the construction of a machine that was able to decipher the messages that the German military sent to its far flung Navy units, Army groups, and most importantly, its submarines across the Atlantic ocean.
Fortunately, a woman was recruited among the men. Her character was played by the capable Keira Knightley. She and Mr. Cumberbatch were not foils, but teammates who gathered daily for over a year's time to work on the project. The break came late in 1942 when a pattern was recognized among the thousands of messages sent by Nazi communicators: one sender used the same sign off every time!
The team's success contributed greatly to the defeat of Germany; but with success came postwar discovery of Turing's homosexuality, a crime in Great Britain until 1967. After being convicted and accepting chemical hormone therapy, Turing committed suicide in 1954. His criminal ordeal was finally ended by the Queen herself in 2013.
Great film, great story well done.
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