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OPERATION MINCEMEAT
Director: John Madden Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn, Jason Isaacs, Simon Russell Beale, Paul Ritter, Mark Gatiss, Nicholas Rowe MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:08 Release Date: 5/6/22 (limited); 5/11/22 (Netflix) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 10, 2022 Based on the true story of successful disinformation operation during World War II, Operation Mincemeat is more invested in the interpersonal relationships and conflicts of those behind the mission than the mission itself. That's a worthwhile approach, to be sure, especially since the outcome of this real-life tale is a given (Even if one doesn't know the specific history of this operation, movies are rarely made about defeats and/failures, particularly when the outcome would be as terrible as the alternative here). The question, then, is whether or not the personal lives and intimate concerns of these particular characters are more intriguing than—or even as interesting as—the mission at hand. The short of it is that these characters and their various entanglements, as written by screenwriter Michelle Ashford (adapting Ben Macintryre's non-fiction book of the same name), aren't nearly as unique or engaging as the mission they're planning. One is half of a failing marriage. Another is the son of a mother who has more concern for the corpse of his brother than her living child, and he happens to be a lovelorn for a co-worker, as well. That co-worker, by the way, becomes the third corner of a generic and generally unspoken love triangle, in which a capable and ambitious woman is mostly relegated to serving as the target of silent affection for those two men. Obviously, there's a bit more to this behind-the-scenes melodrama, which also includes a string of professional rivalries, the suspicion that a relative is a spy, and the woman's attachment to an American soldier, as well as her loneliness as the widow of beloved husband. The complications and conflicts keep mounting, and at a certain point, one starts to wonder if this dramatized account of a top-secret mission is actually going to detail the multiple complications and potential conflicts of its eponymous subject. Ashford and director John Madden occasionally and eventually make that operation, with its exact planning and precise execution leading to various uncertainties and matters of chance, the focus. By the time the payoff to all of that preparation arrives, it comes without the necessary build-up of momentum or exposition to truly appreciate the intricacies, hitches, and suspense of the mission. The narrative revolves around the aforementioned trio, soon to be an understated love triangle, made up of Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth), Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), and Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald). It's 1943 in London, and after sending his wife and children to the safety of the United States, Ewen is leaving his career as an attorney to help with the war effort—working with MI5 in an off-the-books capacity. Charles is the brother of the fallen war hero, working to retrieve his brother's remains for some solace for his grieving mother. He's also smitten with Jean, a widow who works in a secretarial role for the intelligence agency, until she proves a much cleverer asset (although even her task within the mission has her playing a made-up love interest). As for the central plot, it involves MI5's efforts to distract the German government from the Allied Forces' seemingly inevitable invasion of Sicily. A ruse could convince the Nazi powers to divert attention toward Greece, but the subterfuge would have to go through multiple lower-level officials, German spies, and Adolf Hitler's most-trusted advisors to succeed. The particulars of the organization's scheme are important, of course. To maintain some level of discovery, though, let us only say that they involve a corpse, some phony "classified" documents, and a submarine off the coast of fascist but technically neutral Spain. One of the more distinctive elements here is how Madden finely balances the story's tone—between the intrinsic absurdity, as well as grisliness, of the plan and the severity of what its success or failure could mean for the greater war effort against the Nazis. There's a certain—and sometimes grim—level of humor to Ewen and Charles' search for a proper corpse, the obvious flaws—as put in blunt terms by Jason Isaacs' Admiral John Godfrey—with trying to so transparently trick an already-paranoid Hitler, and a running joke about just how many military and government officials are writing spy novels. Meanwhile, Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), soon to be the most famous author of espionage fiction, is getting the experience he needs to create his own imaginary spy. Most of this, though, is taken with the utmost seriousness—from a quick flash to the tragic end of the man who will become that vital corpse, to the assorted personal and professional relationships being tried and tested while more important matters are underway, to a rather detailed account of the precarious events that need to take place and people who need to be fooled once the operation is put into play. That sequence is the movie's most effective, although, if it feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the story and involves a series of unclear loyalties, that somewhat anticlimactic nature is because so much of this narrative has kept the mission in the background for so long. The story itself is fundamentally involving, and even the movie's more melodramatic tendencies are tolerable, thanks to the central performances. Operation Mincemeat, though, never quite connects those broad interpersonal concerns with the specific race-against-the-clock plotting that's really driving this story. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for strong language, some sexual content, brief war violence,
disturbing images, and smoking)
