Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, The Imitation Game portrays the nail-biting race against time faced by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. The motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers had a powerful ally in Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who authorised the provision of any resource they required. The film spans the key periods of Turing’s life, from his unhappy teenage years at boarding school and the triumph of his secret wartime work on the revolutionary electro-mechanical ‘Bombe’, which was capable of breaking 3,000 Enigma-generated naval codes a day, to the tragedy of his post-war decline following his conviction for a now-outdated criminal offence.
A complicated and troubled man whose contributions and genius significantly shortened the war, saving thousands of lives, Turing may have been the eventual victim of an unenlightened British Establishment, but his work and legacy live on.