Operation Mincemeat

Ten Second Review: Cutting a superfluous secondary spot would’ve landed this film a solid mark. As it is, it’s a little too long and spread thin to be as enjoyed as it may have been.

I love a good spy story. The mystery, the deception, the assumption of success, but the tension as pitfalls appear. Not that it’s a remotely hot take, but there’s something sexy about the whole thing. Operation Mincemeat definitely has the ingredients to make that recipe.

The Allied forces need a route into Europe. The Axis have rightly assumed that Sicily will be the point of deployment, but the British need to convince them that that is false. After picking though a report of old plans drafted by a young Ian Fleming (who was working for Naval intelligence before taking up the work for which he is more famous), one idea has jumped out; attaching fake documents to a body and dumping off the Spanish coast in the hopes the documents reach German high command. What could go wrong with that?

At this point Operation Mincemeat has some notoriety, but it remains an incredible story of cunning and deception. It has so many points of intrigue (including the Fleming connection) and the fact that it was successful is just amazing. A little embellishing here and there for that cinematic sparkle and you’ve got yourself a banger. 

For the most part, this film has all that it needs. It carries the intrigue and the tension and the embellishing it does using a deeper Fleming interaction is quite enjoyable. It’s greatest drag is in its unnecessary secondary plot line that inevitably involves a love story. 

The love story adds an extra runtime that only adds weight rather than value. If it had been cut substantially, the overall product would have been a more snappy and engaging film that suffered less from awkward pacing.

It can’t be a surprise at this point that not every film needs to have fingers in every genre. It should also be said that the tired stereotype of men and women never being able to work together without falling in love is not good writing, it’s lazy. If it is true to life, fine. It would still have been better left out as it still hampers your film and still looks like lazy writing. Maybe give female characters stories that don’t depend on the male leads? Maybe they can have compelling stories of their own?

There was much of this film I really enjoyed, it is a shame it chose to fall into such generic pitfalls. If you’re into WW2 films or something to fill a midweek evening then I won’t tell you not to see this. The story itself is incredible and could certainly yield an amazing film. Even with just an edit of what we saw there’s a great film right here. As it is, with the choices made, I don’t know that the ticket price is better than a book on the subject.