When I first watched it, I thought it was pretty good. Then, I read the book upon which it was supposedly based and was fairly surprised in a negative way.
Aside from the names being the same, the screenplay seems to have taken a left turn into fantasy and fiction.
1. Hugh Alexander would never have punched Alan Turing and did not have cause to punch him.
2. Alan never called the descrambling machine "Christopher".
3. Turing's boss, Denniston, was not actively trying to get rid of him -- that would have been pretty insane of him to even try, given the value of Alan's intellectual genius.
4. It was not a case of Alan's smart approach versus everyone else's stupid, brute force approach -- that's fairly insulting to the rest of the cryptanalytic group who were generally extremely bright and talented as well.
5. Alan did *not* take over leadership of the cryptanalytic group from Hugh Alexander -- interestingly, Hugh, due to his superior management and people skills, eventually took over the group from Alan (which was probably for the best, since Alan was not really suited to head the department). So the idea of Alan taking over the group from Hugh was a complete and utter fiction.
6. Although Alan liked to work alone and, in that sense, was a loner, socially, he was fairly gregarious and had numerous friends and friendly acquaintances. This is, of course, quite different from the movie/screenplay, which rather depicts as a guy with fairly poor social skills and a bit of a loner.
I realize that a screenplay, can, at best, be a condensed version of the book. But, in this case, it looks to me like the screenwriter butchered the story. Basically, the screenwriter copied the names and a few facts and then constructed an elaborate fiction which bears little/no resemblance to what actually happened. And this makes me suspect that the screenwriter may have simply skimmed the original book, instead of actually reading it. The screenplay is just so off and so inaccurate, it's laughably wrong.
Aside from the names being the same, the screenplay seems to have taken a left turn into fantasy and fiction.
1. Hugh Alexander would never have punched Alan Turing and did not have cause to punch him.
2. Alan never called the descrambling machine "Christopher".
3. Turing's boss, Denniston, was not actively trying to get rid of him -- that would have been pretty insane of him to even try, given the value of Alan's intellectual genius.
4. It was not a case of Alan's smart approach versus everyone else's stupid, brute force approach -- that's fairly insulting to the rest of the cryptanalytic group who were generally extremely bright and talented as well.
5. Alan did *not* take over leadership of the cryptanalytic group from Hugh Alexander -- interestingly, Hugh, due to his superior management and people skills, eventually took over the group from Alan (which was probably for the best, since Alan was not really suited to head the department). So the idea of Alan taking over the group from Hugh was a complete and utter fiction.
6. Although Alan liked to work alone and, in that sense, was a loner, socially, he was fairly gregarious and had numerous friends and friendly acquaintances. This is, of course, quite different from the movie/screenplay, which rather depicts as a guy with fairly poor social skills and a bit of a loner.
I realize that a screenplay, can, at best, be a condensed version of the book. But, in this case, it looks to me like the screenwriter butchered the story. Basically, the screenwriter copied the names and a few facts and then constructed an elaborate fiction which bears little/no resemblance to what actually happened. And this makes me suspect that the screenwriter may have simply skimmed the original book, instead of actually reading it. The screenplay is just so off and so inaccurate, it's laughably wrong.