'Operation Mincemeat' serves up a delicious true tale of World War II espionage
CNN
With the added bonus of dueling Mr. Darcys for "Pride and Prejudice" aficionados, "Operation Mincemeat" unites Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen in an extraordinary true story of World War II espionage, built around Winston Churchill's statement that in war, truth should be accompanied by "a bodyguard of lies." Here, the deception hinges on a corpse, with thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
Exceptionally well cast and directed by John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love"), this handsome British production bogs down a bit in the personal lives of those responsible for the elaborate codenamed scheme, designed to convince Hitler that an allied invasion would be coming by way of Greece, not Sicily.
Desperate to mislead the Nazis, the two leaders of the program for MI6, Ewen Montagu (Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley ("Succession's" Macfadyen), masterminded the plot of floating a dead body with official-looking papers into the Nazis' possession, hoping they would fall for the ruse and leave the coastline where the soldiers were to land relatively undefended.
