Operation Mincemeat ★★★½
BRITISH war-time drama Operation Mincemeat bites off more than it can chew.
The central, true-life story is interesting enough to carry the film, but the audience is distracted by two sub-plots that don’t work.
Directed by John Madden, the story is based on a book by Ben McIntyre on the British Operation Mincemeat during the Second World War.
In 1943, fears of an eventual German invasion of the United Kingdom are growing by the day as Hitler’s influence in Europe continues to expand.
Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, played by Colin Firth, is a prominent English lawyer allegedly on the verge of retirement. But friends and relatives suspect Montagu also works secretly for the British Government in some capacity.
They are right of course and Montagu is about to start work in a military strategy group known as the Twenty Committee. His wife, Iris, and children travel to safety in the United States where he is eventually meant to join them.
The Allies are planning a major offensive in Europe by way of a beach landing in Sicily, but this is the obvious entry point to everyone, including Hitler.
The Twenty Committee is charged with convincing German intelligence that the invasion will actually occur in Greece so any repelling forces will concentrate on the wrong location.
Montagu immediately locks horns with Committee Head Admiral John Godfrey (Jason Isaacs) who is intent on using standard intelligence methods to execute the ruse.
Montagu aligns himself with another member, Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), who is proposing a far riskier plan to ‘create’ an intelligence officer whose corpse carrying false confidential papers about the invasion location can be washed ashore for German Intelligence to uncover.
Despite his doubts, Godfrey gives Montagu and Cholmondeley permission to also plan their alternative operation should the other efforts fail to gain any traction.
The film is at its strongest when concentrating on the creation of the corpse’s false identity and the attempts required to ensure it is not only found but the papers get into the hands of the right people with influence in the German High Command.
But the addition of sub-plots involving a love triangle between some of those involved and an investigation of Montagu’s background just serve to distract and unnecessarily pad out the running time.
In fact more time would have been better spent looking at the machinations of the German reactions to the operation which actually had severe ramifications from some of those concerns in real-life.
Still, it’s always good to see a strong cast at work, also including Kelly Macdonald and Penelope Wilton in key roles.