Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Penelope Wilton, Kelly Macdonald, Johnny Flynn, Mark Gatiss, Paul Ritter, Jason Issacs, Simon Russell Beale, Hattie Morahan, Will Keen, Alex Jennings, Jonjo O’Neill, Rufus Wright, Ruby Bentall, Charlotte Hamblin, Lorne Macfadyen, Casper Jennings, Dolly Gadsdon, Michael Bott, Ellie Haddinton, Paul Lancaster, Simon Rouse, Amy Marston, Gabrielle Creevy, Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Beyer, Markus von Lingen, Nico Birnbaum, James Fleet, Mark Bonnar, Javier Godino, Pedro Casablanc, Laura Morgan, Miguel Guardiola, Pep Tosar, Alba Brunet, Oscar Zafra.

War is a game inspired by mad men and psychopaths, but it is fought, most of the time, by those who seek the quickest ways to bring it to a conclusion that befits and mirrors their own aims and beliefs.

War is the child of oppression, and the mother of invention, and no matter the side in which a country, a person fights, to be able to utilise the sleight of hand and the full capacity of the mind, the imagination, is to bring war to its knees, to hopefully destroy the psychopath and bring peace to the land.

A single person can change the seemingly inevitable, and whilst World War Two has many heroes, unsung, unknown, the decorated, the ones to whom history has penned chapters and untold physical genuflections to for their part in bringing the terror of the age to its end, there is one for whom gave their body in service, even though they never knew, and their countrymen and women would not be revealed to for more than fifty years.

Operation Mincemeat shows the almost near truth of the deception that the recently deceased Glyndwr Michael played his posthumous part in bringing the Allied cause one step closer to freeing Europe from the tyranny of fascism, a dead man to whom no other British person at the time could have been the subject of such an important mission in the build up to invasion of Sicily.

If the detailed explanation of the event of Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre was a compulsive read, and by default the influential The Spy Who Never Was, the recollections and observances of one of the geniuses behind the daring ruse, Ewan Montague, were an eye-opening series of the secret war fought against the evil of Nazism, then the detail involved in John Madden’s film is quite astonishing.

The trojan horse that was the corpse of Glyndwr Michael, the absolute sheer background work that was composed in changing a desperate man’s life, one filled with sorrow and self-destruction to one of heroism is beautifully explored, and brings to the forefront the revolution required in turning the tide against Hitler and his bully boy murdering fanatics, for if Montague, played with calm efficiency by the ever-faithful Colin Firth, and Charles Cholmondeley, given passionate insight by Matthew Macfadyen, and their team, which included the future James Bond creator Ian Fleming, had not succeeded in their quest to fool the Germans into moving thousands of soldiers from the Mediterranean island to Greece, then it could be doubted that the success a year later of D- Day would have been even considered.

This was subterfuge of the highest order, a deception straight out of history, but so cunning in its application that the outcome is extraordinary, and whilst to some such a move was not only bold, but damned foolhardy, even sacrilegious for the human body to be used in such a fashion, the results speak for themselves; this was the moment in which a tide was turned against the military might of the Nazi’s and one to whom good thinking people of the world should always remember the man who was given a new life in death as Major William Martin – Glyndwr Michael.

A film which adds another dimension to a war that pushed the boundaries of existence and human suffering beyond anything that had been endured before, and proof that one man, be alive or dead, can truly make a difference in the name of freedom. 

Ian D. Hall