Operation Mincemeat

The more outrageous the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. Operation Mincemeat offers us a look at the 1943 deception operation instrumental to getting the Allies back in the fight. The group led by Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) was tasked with convincing Germany the Allies would invade Greece instead of the more logical location of Sicily. Their lie involved the creation of a solider who didn't exist, a dead body, fake papers, and a lot of luck.

The core group also includes Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald) who proved vital to the campaign, although came between the two men, Penelope Wilton as Montagu's loyal assistant, Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming, and Jason Isaacs as the Admiral who doesn't believe in the plan initially but still supports it when its greenlit by Churchill (Simon Russell Beale).

Operation Mincemeat is a bit of everything with a farcical slant involving the body, with romantic underpinnings and the drama of the war set as a background for the camaraderie that is created between the three stars while creating the backstory for soldier who doesn't exist but somehow will still give hope to a hopeless cause. While I think the subplot of Mark Gatiss as Montagu's brother feels a bit tacked on, and some of the love triangle sequences also drag you from the main story at least once too often, somehow all the various elements do blend together for a solid film enhanced by the performances of Macfadyen, Firth, and Macdonald.

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• Title: Operation Mincemeat
• IMDb: link