Benedict Cumberbatch shines as real-life war hero and pioneer of modern-day computing, Alan Turing, who saved millions of lives by cracking Germany’s so-called unbreakable code during WWII.

The film opens in 1941 as England and Germany have declared war against each other. The Brits are getting their butts beat as the rest of Europe has already fallen to Hitler and the Nazis. If England can somehow decode the infamous German Enigma machine, perhaps the war can be turned. Turing (Cumberbatch), a brilliant mathematician, is assigned to help with the decoding process. Socially inept, he has a hard time working with his small cadre of code breakers and they are having no success.

Knightly plays, brilliant in her own right, Joan Clarke, who helps Turing, outside the all-boys group. While great friends and accomplished collaborators, they don’t become romantic for reasons that become obvious during the film. Turing’s focus is on the building and development of the machine that will provide a mechanical process of encryption that is faster than any group of humans can process given the time constraints. The Nazis change the encoding every day.

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