Mr Darcy Goes to War
Truth once again proves stranger than fiction in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ softball director John Madden’s ‘Operation Mincemeat’.
Operation MIncemeat
Director: John Madden • Writer: Michelle Ashford, based on the non-fiction book by Ben Macintyre
Starring: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly MacDonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn, Jason Isaacs, Mark Gatiss, Simon Russell Beale
USA/UK • 2hrs 8mins
Opens Hong Kong June 16 • IIA
Grade: B
It’s January 1943 and Europe is entrenched in the Second World War, the Germans seem undefeatable and Navy officer Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) is called up to help Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) get Allied forces into Sicily by July of that year. It’s a nearly impossible task that demands innovative thinking, to put it mildly.
So begins Operation Mincemeat, an old-fashioned war thriller based on bonkers real life events. Military deception is as old as militaries, dating to antiquity, and so Operation Mincemeat is a nearly perfect amalgam of two of the movies’ favourite sub-genres: the war thriller and the “stranger than fiction,” based-on-true-events pic. Netflix has created a cottage industry from bizarre true crime, but blue chip filmmakers have dabbled in the form too. Think of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can, about the the years-long pursuit of con man Frank Abagnale (who, in another twist, a journalist outed as full of shit in 2020). Put them together and you get stuff like an entire platoon looking for the fourth of four brothers after the other three are KIA in Saving Private Ryan, or the heightened shenanigans of Argo. Director John Madden (who’s still living down Shakespeare in Love, and is best known for piffle like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) is more restrained than the Americans and opts to keep Mincemeat as dignified as possible while leaning into its outlandishness.
A little respect for Glyndwr Michael, if you please
Like the real life Operation Mincemeat, Montagu’s gambit aims to throw Adolf off his game by hatching a crackpot plan involving the body of a recently deceased homeless man (Glyndwr Michael in reality) dressed up as a “Major William Martin” of the Royal Marines and laden with state secrets that hint at an Allied invasion of Greece, “accidentally” washing ashore in Cadiz, and sending Nazi spies there into a tizzy at the news. Montagu’s co-conspirators include Charles Cholmondeley (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen), who suggested the ruse, and a professionally ambitious widow that Charles has a crush on, Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald). Oh! And the Jewish Montagu’s wife and kids have been shipped off to the US for their safety. So you know what that means? Wartime romance! Yes, cringe now.
The plans go about as well as expected: they can’t find the right cadaver, the Spanish staff they expect will help the plot aren’t where they’re supposed to be, the OM team’s immediate supervisor, Admiral John Godfrey (Jason Isaacs, with glorious resting bitch face and murderous side-eye) expresses constant scepticism at the crew’s ability to make the plan work. But the film is about British Exceptionalism and ego-soothing as much as anything else, so all goes well. See, Europe? You need the English!
This is minimum safe distance for Isaacs’ side-eye
There are moments when Operation Mincemeat ambles and rambles, almost as if it were deconstructing the creative process, which is helped along by the presence of Naval officer and budding author Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn, Lovesick), but Madden and writer Michelle Ashford keep things engaging, and they pull off a Titanic feat: They keep the tension strung tightly despite most of us knowing how it ends. This is a handsomely mounted, old-school espionage procedural, and when it focuses on the planning it is stupidly entertaining. It helps that along with Isaacs’ withering glances, Firth and Macfadyen find the dry humour buried within the grim mission, and both turn in deft performances that propel the narrative.
But why Ashford (best known for the Masters & Johnson series Masters of Sex) decided to shoehorn a bullshit love triangle (there’s no evidence of this) into the story, thereby bloating the run time and bringing the action to a screeching halt every time Jean and Ewen (I don’t care if he’s Mr Darcy) made goo-goo eyes and Charles looks on with seething jealousy and/or self-pity, is anyone’s guess. This isn’t what “Where are the women characters?” means. Ronald Neame’s 1956 spin on the story, The Man Who Never Was, based on Montagu’s own book, doesn’t bother with it. This shouldn’t have. What, the Nazi conquest of Europe and genocide aren’t critical enough? Okay, Michelle. Whatever. — DEK