Chris At The Pictures

From director Morten Tyldum (responsible for breakout Scandinavian hit Headhunters) comes The Imitation Game, the story of mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and how he came to break the German Enigma code during World War II. Relayed by Turing during his brief imprisonment in 1951, the story wends its way through the years of research, trials and tribulations of war and his own troubled childhood to build a portrait of the man himself and the importance of his work to the war and the modern world.

Everything in the film hangs upon the central performance, and my initial concern was that due to his extraordinary amount of work in recent years, there would be very little that was refreshing or interesting in Cumberbatch’s turn as the tortured genius. Certainly within the initial to-ing and fro-ing between Turing and the supercilious naval commander (Charles Dance), my worries seemed well-founded, but as the story develops and we are given greater insight into the mind of our leading man, there were many moments where I completely forgot I was watching an actor giving a performance, and that itself is an achievement any actor can be proud of.

Keira Knightley – in the greater of her two current multiplex roles – is given very little to do and is saddled with the majority of the films’ somewhat riper dialogue, but exceeds the boundaries of her character and gives a very fine turn, as does Matthew Goode, unsurprising as the two have done the posh, stiff-upper-lip British roles in the past and have polished them to a tee. Rory Kinnear as the interrogator to whom Turing relays his life story is also on startlingly great but understated and criminally underused form.

Though a large part of the thriller element is lost, due to the fact that we all know that the code was broken and the war was won, but the film is paced very well and a good balance is found between the development of the Enigma, the group effort of winning the war and the study of Turing as an individual. There is a surprising spring of humour throughout, the aforementioned scene between Cumberbatch and Dance feeling almost Python-esque, juxtaposed with scenes of moral ambiguity and fear that don’t feel jarring at any point.

Yes, the Alexandre Desplat score is – as usual – overdone, and some of the dialogue is a little ripe, but there’s more than enough to admire here: Cumberbatch is terrific in the central role, the supporting cast are great, and what the film achieves above all else – mainly in its final moments – is conveying the tortured soul of a real hero. The sense of unfairness is gut-punchingly apparent, as is the urging of acceptance.

★★★½☆

Dracula Untold is sold both as a re-telling of the Dracula story and the opening salvo to Universal Studios’ Avengers style monsters franchise. Luke Evans (The Hobbit) stars as Vlad, a battle-hardened warrior prince known as ‘The Impaler’ who is forced to make a terrible choice when Turkish Warlord Mehmed (Dominic Cooper) demands a thousand young boys to be taken as soldiers in his army. Unwilling to give up his own son and resigned to war with Mehmed, Vlad makes a pact with a Vampire Master (Charles Dance) to take on the powers of the night in order to defeat his enemies.

It is important to say that initially I had high hopes for Untold, as the primary trailer seemed to relay a refreshing take on the story with interesting concepts that could be examined and developed with the continent-spanning war as a dramatic backdrop. Unfortunately, what we actually get is essentially Man-Bat Begins, though to make a comparison to a Nolan movie would convey connotations to intelligence, which Untold is severely lacking.

This is not to say that there are no pleasures to be had: Luke Evans scrubs up well in his role, lending just the right level of physical intimidation and emotional weight to the character (plus he looks pretty swish in a dragon-emblazoned suit of armour) whilst Charles Dance picks the scenery out from between razor sharp fangs. The supporting cast leave a lot to be desired, but this may not be entirely their fault. The usually capable Dominic Cooper is saddled with uninspiring dialogue whilst Sarah Gadon as Vlad’s wife does her best but spends most of her screen time smothered in a facial expression that is supposed to be fear but looks more like boredom.

The cinematography is uninvolving and at times all over the place, the fairly interesting gothic production design not given enough room to shine. Action sequences are reduced to disorientating shaky cam that spins all over the place, cutting every two seconds, and at times I had a very hard time working out who was who because it just looked like a pile of medieval props having a fight with itself in a wind-tunnel. It also seems increasingly odd that in a post Lord of the Rings world where fantasy-era battles are grim and dirty that the lesson about hair was never learned: everyone in the Tolkein trilogy looked like they’d been through hell; the cast of Untold emerge from the field of battle with their hair gel still firmly in place.

Developments in the plot are laughably predictable, unsubtly foreshadowed or outright spelled out for the hard of thinking at the back. For a film based around one of the original inspirations of the Dark Knight, there are lines of dialogue directly stolen from Batman Begins (‘Men fear most what they cannot see’ etc.) and the poster campaigns also appear to be mimicking the 2005 blockbuster. But whilst Begins was an incredible setup for an epic trilogy, Untold is strikingly unremarkable as the beginning of a larger cinematic universe.

The overriding feeling upon emerging from Dracula Untold is disappointment. The concepts that held such promise are barely paid lip service and all but Evans and Dance feel wasted in a film that doesn’t have the willpower to deliver. I want to believe that said concepts will have time to develop in future installments, but I won’t hold my breath.

1.5 stars