Today we know very well that in addition to the battlefield, wars are fought in the dark. Somewhere deep in the darkness, these “invisible wars” are being fought, that is, battles in which intelligence services are involved. Their work is as important to victory as the “work” of the team in the trenches, and one extremely important intelligence episode from that underground, invisible part of World War II is brought by this almost typical classic British spy drama. Veteran John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) dealt with an operation that may not be so well known, but played an extremely important role in directing the war. The “Operation Mincemeat” after which the film was named was in fact an operation of fraud by German intelligence services on the eve of the Allied landing in Sicily in 1943.
It was not necessary to have a specially developed military mind then, so that it would be clear to everyone that the allies would land in Sicily. The Nazis were also aware of this, and they had already begun to prepare a warm welcome for them there, and the top of the British army feared that the landing alone could bring huge losses in manpower. To avoid this and to convince the Nazis that a counter-offensive would be launched from Greece, the British Secret Service assembled a team to devise the fraud. At the head of the team was British lawyer of Jewish descent Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) who made himself available to the army, and Admiral Godfrey (Jason Isaacs) also hired Officer Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew McFadyen).
In fact, his idea was to try to trick the Nazis into corrupting the body of a British officer with fake correspondence between the two generals about plans to land in Greece, and such an operation would eventually be accepted. Although it seems completely absurd and impossible for Nazi intelligence to fall for something like this, Montagu and Cholmondeley, with the help of Secretary Jean (Kelly MacDonald), who will be dear to both of them, will eventually embark on the plan. And this film is really full of surprises, amazing situations and as far as I was able to inform myself, it showed practically everything that really happens Madden is completely realistic and everything we see in this film, in fact, happened.
It’s a real old-fashioned spy movie that is a bit reminiscent of old James Bond movies (which is not surprising since one of the members of the British counterintelligence community was Ian Fleming, author of books about Agent 007, who is also the narrator of the whole story). those silly gadgets and close encounters with beauties of all kinds. The cast is also up to the task, and in addition to the above, there are Johnny Flynn as Fleming and Simon Russell Beale as Churchill, and this is a film that those who love classic spy films will certainly not miss.