This curious telemovie has a number of fierce devotees, including some who insist it's a better account of Alan Turing than the seriously over-hyped Hollywood version, The Imitation Game. In fact, it's a fairly unimaginative adaptation of a ponderous and often clunky stage play, and one that hasn't dated at all well. The chief virtue is supposedly Derek Jacobi's performance as Turing, but, truth be told, Jacobi - accomplished and committed as he is to the role - is as far from the real Turing as Cumberbatch's mannered, showy turn in Imitation Game. For one thing, Jacobi is as unlike Turing physically as it's possible to be. He's also twenty years older than Turing was when he died, and nearly twice the age Turing was when he was code-breaking at Bletchley Park. Ultimately, both versions make less of Turing's contribution to computing and code-breaking than they should. Where Imitation Game becomes preoccupied with manufacturing a romance with Joan Clarke that never was, Breaking The Code makes Turing's homosexuality THE BIG PROBLEM in a way that renders him tortured and tragic. In fact, Turing never was tortured about his sexuality; he was open and unapologetic in ways that were well ahead of his time. Even ahead of the prevailing attitudes in this 1980s telling of his tale. And yet, when it matters most the teleplay makes very little of the impact Turing's conviction for indecent acts had on his professional and personal life. It also fails to make much of the nature of his death (suicide, some say murder), which one would have thought was a gift to any dramatist. Overall, Breaking The Code is not so offensively phoney has The Imitation Game, but more or less equally unsatisfying. A definitive film biography of Turing is remains to be made.
Review of Breaking the Code
