Review | Operation Mincemeat movie review: stately second world war drama tells an incredible true story of deception
- Tricking the Nazis into believing Allied forces will invade Greece rather than Sicily sets off a gripping drama that will keep viewers hooked to the end
- Matthew Macfadyen is great as the MI5 agent who cooks up the plan but the romance between Colin Firth’s naval rep and Kelly Macdonald’s clerk is less believable
4/5 stars
Based on a scarcely believable true story, John Madden’s Operation Mincemeat is a stately World War II drama set at a vital turning point in the conflict.
The year is 1943 and Allied forces (those opposing Germany, Japan and Italy) plan to storm the strategically located island of Sicily in the Mediterranean, which is exactly what German intelligence is expecting.
A ruse is cooked up by British secret agent Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) to convince the Nazi high command that the Allies are massing to invade Greece, a sleight of hand that will leave Sicily largely unguarded.
Cholmondeley is joined by naval representative Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth), since fundamental to the plan is disguising a corpse as that of a dead British marine – one who happens to be carrying documents confirming this fake Greek raid.