Film Review: Operation Mincemeat
Images courtesy of Transmission Films.
The bizarre true story of a WWII operation that saw British intelligence plant false documents on a corpse and leave it for the Nazis to find, Operation Mincemeat is nonetheless a very familiar piece of modern British mid-scale filmmaking. A model of solid execution and welcome restraint, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel director John Madden’s new film embodies the collected, competent Britons that populate its narrative. Where it falls, perhaps, is in its extremely safe creative identity, and its over-inclination to jam recognisable figures into its story.
The script, from Michelle Ashford – creator of the underappreciated American TV series Masters of Sex – is the second feature film screenplay concerning these events, the first being made into 1956’s The Man Who Never Was. In bringing it to the screen, Madden proceeds to write the textbook on safe casting. Front your ensemble with Colin Firth, the epitome of the steady hand, a veteran of the period drama. Against him, cast Matthew Macfadyen, the subject of contemporary buzz due to his incredible work in Succession. As the clumsily-introduced female lead Jean Leslie, bring in Kelly Macdonald to reliably emote.
Fill out the various peripheral military officer and brother-of-the-lead roles with recognisable British faces like Jason Isaacs, Mark Gatiss, and Alex Jennings, and you’ve ticked your boxes – but success isn’t guaranteed. Firth is largely unable to make an impact. Macfadyen is handcuffed to a confusing character, never demonstrating whether or not the audience should sympathise with his pining after Jean. Macdonald, for her part, struggles against a pretty thin role, though she often drifts into her native Scottish accent, in lieu of Jean’s Londonite heritage.
Also among the list of roles are a few very eye-catching names: the women of the Bletchley circle, Winston Churchill, and Ian Fleming. The famous prime minister, played ably here by Simon Russell Beale, is such a fixture of British film and television that his presence draws away from everything else in the story, like a big, cigar-smoking black hole. Filmmakers can’t resist having Churchill pop up for a few scenes, but it is beginning to undermine the story they’re telling each time – and certainly does here. In the case of Ian Fleming, who is granted a level of prominence in this story that seems historically dubious, the film appears most intent on just winking at Bond-adjacent things the audience can smile knowingly at, like an easter egg in a Marvel Film. Fleming mentions nicknaming someone M, and marvels conspicuously at a very gadget-like tool in military intelligence’s Q Branch. The choice of the otherwise-compelling Emma. (2020) heartthrob Johnny Flynn for the role distracts us further.
Despite the obnoxious Fleming cameos, the plot rolls on as we follow the increasingly improbable tale to the realisation of our heroes’ ambitious scheme. The action moves to Spain, where the corpse is found, and we track its arrival to Nazi headquarters in a more traditional spy-movie sequence that is the strongest section of the film – elsewhere, it’s a little too driven by expositional dialogue. The use of score, particularly as everything comes to a climax, is liberal – Madden loves to inject it into a quick montage, whether it's information passing from person to person, or tight shots of clacking telegram machinery.
Ultimately, despite its lack of distinctive filmmaking when telling a very unique story, Operation Mincemeat succeeds on the strength of its restraint. It never goes for the false-feeling third-act melodrama that you might expect from the familiar war film mould. Instead, it is content to be the cinematic cousin of the British procedural TV show – safe, familiar, but satisfying.
Operation Mincemeat is screening in cinemas from Thursday 12th May 2022. For tickets and more info, click here.