Thursday, May 12, 2022

Film Review - Operation Mincemeat (2022)

 Operation Mincemeat is a new British film that stars Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu who is recruited into Her Majesty’s Government in 1943 during World War 2 and the Allies are trying to find a way into Europe to help liberate it from Nazi occupation and think they may have found a route through Sicily in Italy but the beach area is heavily fortified and will need diverting to have a chance of success so Ewen and a band of other officers (Penelope Wilton, Jason Isaacs, Matthew MacFayden, Kelly Macdonald and Johnny Flynn) decide to use a corpse with false top secret info in a high stakes game of deception that could decide the fate of the free world.

 

Operation Mincemeat was definitely one of those surprise films I didn’t think would be as enjoyable as it was and this along with the Duke (another British film) are probably my favourite films of 2022 so far even though the year is young and not even halfway done.

 

The main reason for this is that I was really riveted by this crazy story, a plan so crazy that it could just work and even though part of you thinks that you know how it all ends given the Allied victory in World War 2 I was still wondering how on Earth they were going to pull this plan off and would it work at all because if it didn’t things would’ve been very different.

 

It also helps that the film has a great cast at its disposal, Colin Firth is a big favourite of mine and here he is as reliable as always, Macfayden and Macdonald are very good as well while Penelope Wilton always charming in a film is good as well also I have to say Hello to Jason Isaacs as well who is great as the crusty admiral who may or may not approve this operation.

 

One part of the film that did make me scratch my head a little was Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming who of course was the creator of the James Bond books and was a real life Naval officer but in this movie they have him almost quasi narrate this story as if he was writing one of his Bond plots and it felt not only a little jarring given Fleming was mainly a desk sailor in his Wartime years but I kept thinking of a 1991 movie called Spymaker.

 

In that film they attempt to make a film about Fleming and his life in World War 2 in the vein of a Bond film and it even has Jason Connery (Sean’s son) playing Fleming himself plus a young Kirstin Scott Thomas as well as David Warner as an M type character and Joss Ackland and granted I’ve only seen a preview for this film but it was something that came to mind while watching this movie.

 

And so that was Operation Mincemeat and I really enjoyed it and I hope people go and watch it if they get the chance as I haven’t enjoyed a movie this much in a while and it is very refreshing, 3 and  a half out of 5.

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