BRITISH ESPIONAGE DISSECTED FOR MASSES

SPYCRAFT NOT THE THRILLER ONE EXPECTS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives depended on the Allies convincing the Nazis that a second fighting front would be opened off the Mediterranean Coast of Greece.

Deception and the fear of the silent unknown are what drives the plot in Operation Mincemeat (2022).

Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen costar as World War II British intelligence officers tasked with developing the secret mission in 1943.

Operation Mincemeat is just a small part of the overall intelligence operation, but director John Madden focusses his camera on this one integral aspect.

The Germans had amassed troops to defend the coastline in Sicily, and the Allied Generals needed the Nazis to believe the troops should be stationed in Greece before the Allied invasion of Sicily could begin one year before the Normandy landings off the coast of France.

The Allies fighting the Germans in Sicily to the south, and the Russians fighting the Germans within Russia to the East, would open up the possibility of the D-Day invasion of Western Europe because the German troops would then be divided along three live fighting fronts.

As the plot plan is gradually pieced together, Firth is joined by Kelly Macdonald, as well as Jason Isaacs as Admiral John Godfrey, Alex Jennings as John Masterman, and Simon Russell Beale as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

A light music score is pasted over most scenes to give the narrative an atmosphere of plodding urgency befitting intelligence operations involved in aiding a live war front.

Firth and Macfadyen develop characters that work well together in collaboration with the higher ups, as well as Jean Leslie, played by Macdonald. Leslie buys into the real life plot when asked for a picture of herself as a contribution to the run silent run deep espionage. 

The plot, which is revealed early on in the film, is all about planting false intelligence papers on a cadaver that magically washes ashore off the coast of Spain.

The British have a counterintelligence unit in Spain that can then kind of will the papers into German hands.

A comedic undertone runs throughout the script in that sense of black humour fun that the British do so well.

More humor develops because no one believes the plan will really work, and there is a bit of concern that if discovered, just the opposite could happen.

Madden fills the narrative with interesting character studies, each of which have small parts in moving the plot forward, such as Leslie, who solves several problems that the boys cannot resolve.

Churchill appears in scenes two or three times, but in any event, just enough of an appearance to give the story an air of authority.

This biopic becomes intriguing because Madden has the audience buy into the plan to save Europe and everyone watching from there on wants to know how all the details are worked out.

Success is not guaranteed though because the underling comedy continues to simmer as if building to a really big laugh when everything falls apart like the script has been foreshadowing.

No one really knows for certain until the very end.

Operation Mincemeat is streaming on Netflix.