Truly excellent, the story of how deception played such a key part in the Allies victory. Uniformly terrific performances and a great plot, demonstrating the "Wilderness of mirrors" of intelligence work, you can never really be sure of what is real and what is not and have to continually balance one risk against another. The ruthlessness of when the corpse's sister shows up and you have to put your nobler feelings aside because what you're doing is so much more important than her grief at her brother's death, that if you don't carry on there will be thousands of more grieving siblings to mourn for. The heart-stopping scene where the German agent confronts the heroine and you have to consider whether or not to continue, not knowing if there really is an anti-Hitler faction in German intelligence or whether this is all a bluff to make her spill her guts (the fact that he leaves her alive suggests the former). The nagging fear of Communist infiltration which turn out to be 100% true with Philby, Burgess and co. The references to the true inspiration for the plot, ex-British Intelligence chief Basil Thomson (one of the prime architects of the IRA's defeat) and his story "The Milner's Hat'. In truth the only reason I don't give it 10 out of 10 is that it somewhat exaggerates the impact of the scheme, had it not worked casualties in Sicily would have been far greater but it certainly wouldn't have affected the course of the war and there was no chance of a German invasion of Britain by 1943. But all told a classic spy story that I would recommend to anyone.
Review of Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat
(2021)
A truly great film of the quiet heroes of the Second World War
23 April 2022