Starring: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Simon Russell Beale, Penelope Wilton, Jason Isaacs
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 127 mins. Reviewed in May 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This British war drama tells the story of a World War II strategy called ‘Operation Mincemeat’, which aimed to keep plans for the Allied invasion of Sicily secret from Germany. The deception was successful.
This British war drama is based on a book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, which was published in 2010. At the height of WWII, British agents formulated a secret plan called ‘Operation Mincemeat’ to deceive Germany about plans to invade Sicily. The success of the deception inspired both this film, one before it, and a stage musical, and is based on actual events. The events of Operation Mincemeat were first covered by film, in Ronald Neame’s award-winning movie, The Man Who Never Was, which was voted Best Film by BAFTA in 1956.
The strategy was to convince Germany that Allied forces were planning to invade Greece, not Sicily. Forged documents were hidden on a dead body that was set adrift in Spanish waters. The dead man was dressed as an officer of the Royal Marines, and British Intelligence planted the papers of a fake marine captain in his clothes. Once a homeless man without a living family, the dead man’s body was taken via submarine to waters off the Spanish coast, and set afloat. The body carried bogus plans for a non-existent invasion, and British Intelligence assumed they would find their way into German hands, and into the hands of Adolf Hitler, in particular. All turned out to be true.
When the false intelligence was passed to Hitler, Germany took immediate steps to defend Greece, the Balkans, and Sardinia, not Sicily. Germany was totally unaware that the Allied forces had been planning to invade Sicily, and the deception resulted in less resistance to the Allied invasion. When the Allied troops invaded, Sicily was liberated more quickly than thought possible; German troops were forced to retreat; and Allied losses were more limited than anticipated.
Two members of British Intelligence played a leading part in the deception, and they are played well in the movie. Lieutenant Ewen Montagu (Firth), a Jewish Intelligence Officer, eccentrically led the team. Second in command was an awkward, likeable RAF Officer, Charles Cholmondeley (Macfadyen). Beale plays Winston Churchill, who was won over by the imaginative strategy.
The film as a whole gives an entertaining account of wartime espionage and there are impressive performances from a well-chosen ensemble cast that dramatically and wittily combined a twisting plot-line with actual events. The film slips at times into melodrama, but it offers a well-acted wartime drama, about how events had to be ‘unbelievable enough to be believable.
Firth and Macfadyen impressively capture the look and manner of the ‘stiff’ officers they are meant to characterise. Macdonald plays Jean Leslie, a MI5 clerk, whose photo was put in the clothes of the dead body to indicate that the fake captain had a girl friend. The film spends too much time on the rival dynamics associated with how Ewen, Charles, and Jean related personally to each other, but for the most part the movie stays on theme and provides an entertaining look at the world of spies in war-time. Once the body was discovered, and its papers fell into German hands, the movie becomes fascinating viewing on how it all happened. In the final unravelling, some attention-getting insights are communicated to share ‘the light’.
The film is rich in period detail and displays trauma and humour, the latter being illustrated, for example, by Firth trying to photograph a dead body sitting upright. This film joins war drama with lived events in unusual ways, and it delivers the combination stylishly and with tension. The fact that the events being depicted are true makes the movie especially involving.
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