Operation Mincemeat
Director: John Madden
Year Released: 2021
Rating: 2.0
British Naval intelligence officers Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) concoct a devious scheme during World War II to "trick" Nazi Germany into thinking the Allied Forces were going to invade Greece and Sardinia when in reality they were targeting Sicily - to do this, they took the corpse of Glyndwr Michael (who ingested rat poison), gave him a fake identity, attached classified documents to him and dumped his body off the coast of Spain. The actual idea (which worked) was simply ingenious, but Madden manages to drain out any sort of tension or drama from the material, focusing largely on the drawn-out "love triangle" between the two men and widowed secretary Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald). Despite its belabored nature, I do appreciate the praise for the written word: Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), who famously invented James Bond, was a part of the project ... as was "suspected Commie" Ivor Montagu (Mark Gatiss) - Ewen's brother - who produced several of Hitchcock's movies! And then to take that one step further: I wonder if this operation was in the back of Hitch's mind when he was making The Trouble With Harry ... it all goes around, you know.