Operation Mincemeat

One of the masterminds behind this plot happened to be Ian Fleming, who would go on to create the character known as 007, James Bond. The story of the operation ...

Operation Mincemeat not only does wrong by its stellar cast, but by the absurd story on which it’s based, a World War II plot so much stranger than fiction that it feels perfect for a movie. It represents the subplot about authorship and pouring oneself into one’s creations reaching its absolute emotional apex, but the film never gets this thoughtful again, and never again does its focus return to this idea. While it may seem strange to suggest that a story set in one of the darkest periods in modern history ought to have been more whimsical, there is, in fact, a case to be made based on the images themselves. Its supremely British will-they-won’t-they subplot, about two characters who seem to want to act on their feelings but are bound by societal ideals, is a drag when it comes at the cost of the wartime story, and it turns not only the otherwise remarkable Firth into an empty husk, but the equally brilliant Macdonald into a one-note bore. On one hand, it makes sense that Macfadyen would be something of a slimy, insecure anti-Darcy, given Cholmondeley’s role in this plot — his part is simply to observe; Leslie has no feelings for him whatsoever — but if the Montagu-Leslie story is fictitious to begin with, then why introduce the shadow of a love triangle without having it materialize in the slightest? Cholmondeley is left a jealous third party, leading to some pettiness, but this all plays out in its own corner of the film, seemingly disconnected from the overall plot, which chugs along from objective to objective as the operation draws near.

'Operation Mincemeat' tells the improbable yet largely true story of a British intelligence operation that used a corpse to defeat the Germans.

So, yes, people were going to the movies and dancing away at private clubs like the one in our movie, the Gargoyle Club.” If anything, Madden says, the real story had to be simplified in order to keep the pace of his movie flowing. Decades would go by before war-era secrets were declassified and the body was revealed to be that of Glyndwr Michael. In 1997, British officials added a postscript to his grave that revealed all: “Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin RM.” In his post-war book “The Man Who Never Was,” Montagu described the dead man as a vagrant who died of rat poisoning. “In wartime, you’re dealing with a world where people are thrust together with extreme emotional stakes,” he says, explaining the decision to amplify that triangle. “Fleming was a decade away from his first Bond novel at that point, but he was a budding writer,” says Madden, who chose to have the Fleming character be the movie’s narrator.

The Netflix film Operation Mincemeat faces exactly that sort of conundrum with its dramatization of the titular, secret plan by Allied forces to trick the Nazis ...

Firth and Macfadyen have an entertaining relationship that teeters on the brink of adversarial, but the film opts not to explore that well-worn trope. Their relationship in the film feels like an entirely unnecessary plot thread that, at best, distracts from the otherwise captivating story of the mission, and at worst, cheapens their respective characters’ roles by turning them into star-crossed lovers who wandered into an espionage thriller. We know the Allied forces eventually win the war, after all, but filmmaker John Madden’s feature still manages to manufacture plenty of compelling moments in telling the story of one of history’s greatest wartime acts of deception.

Operation Mincemeat's collection of British talent is its greatest asset, but the film is too content to coast on watching them do their thing.

The contrast between this and the romanticized visions of the characters feels intentional, but exactly what is intended is unclear. Is this designed to highlight the non-Bondness of Madden's film, and thereby celebrate the mundane, life-saving reality of MI5? Is it to frame plans like Operation Mincemeat as how the creatively inclined contributed to the war effort with maximum impact? For the most part, it sports the look of the standard biopic. It will even tap that familiar well of emotion for the story's inevitable conclusion. Based on a genuine World War II military undertaking, director John Madden's Operation Mincemeat tells the story of how British Military Intelligence convinced Nazi Germany that the Allies were planning to invade Greece instead of Sicily by loading up a corpse with fake documents and beaching it on the Spanish coast. While British audiences have the option of buying a ticket for it instead of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, most American viewers will have to be content with queueing it up at home, but thinking about the viewing experience in those oppositional terms might actually help it.

Starring Colin Firth, Operation Mincemeat mixes an unbelievable WWII mission with the equally entrancing lives of the people behind it.

But the audience’s sympathy almost entirely lies with Cholmondeley and Leslie. Macfayden clearly wants love and honor, but is willing to put others’ needs ahead of his own. His intentions with Leslie are always suspect, as his wife has moved to America during the war, and MI6’s uncertainty about whether Montagu’s brother (Mark Gatiss) is a community spy, makes Montagu a fascinating character to try and figure out. Operation Mincemeat proves this to be true with the almost unbelievable story of a World War II espionage operation that not only explores the audacity of this remarkable scenario, but the equally enthralling lives of those who made this undertaking a reality. With this triangle of sorts, we see the crippling loneliness that war can create, how even without being in battle, war can tear people apart, separate, and leave scars that never heal. This includes giving the man a believable love story that will further flesh out who this person was, helping sell the deception even more. Montagu, Cholmondeley, and their entire team have to turn a long-dead body into Major William Martin, a man with intelligence on the Allies’ plans, but also, make him into a believable human being, with loves, wants, desires, and dreams.

Read about the Operation Mincemeat true story, the Colin Firth Netflix movie based on real-life British officer Ewen Montagu.

“And so I began to look into the MI5 files, and they really are the most extraordinary cornucopia of detail because they’re written by and for people who never expected them to be made public. Though most of the Netflix film is based on the true story laid out in Macintyre’s book, some liberties were taken while making the movie version. In order to carry out this plan, two British officers—Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (played by Matthew Macfadyen)— obtained the dead body of a homeless man who died of rat poison and created a fictional identity for him: Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. Decryptions of coded German messages later showed that the plan worked, and the Germans fell for it. Read on to get a briefing on the Operation Mincemeat true story, and to see how accurate Netflix’s Operation Mincemeat is. That makes Netflix’s Operation Mincemeat the second movie to be made about this morbidly fascinating true story.

In "Operation Mincemeat" Matthew Macfadyen takes top stealth honors, deftly capturing the rapid-fire story-conference banter with Colin Firth.

It’s the kind of thing where Firth, as Montagu, rattles through a line such as “Yes, it’s simply a variation on the Haversack Ruse,” and then we get a definition of the Haversack Ruse a little while later. Call Madden’s version a civilized shell game that accomplishes its mission, more or less in the spirit of how things actually got made up and went down. This is not the first film to take on this story: In 1956, director Ronald Neame’s heavily fictionalized “The Man Who Never Was” starred Clifton Webb as Montagu. Montagu’s brother was a Communist sympathizer and, as British intelligence brass believed (based on some evidence), he may have been spying for the Russians. Higher up the chain of command, Simon Russell Beale nails his two scenes as Winston Churchill, without the prosthetic wonders Gary Oldman had in “Darkest Hour.” The body, in uniform, with letters from his fake sweetheart tucked in a pocket, was strategically plunked into the ocean off the coast of Spain, officially a neutral country at the time. But the men and women of MI5 assuredly helped make the invasion of Sicily a key Allied military success.

In this World War II drama from Netflix, a team of spies uses a vagrant's corpse to outwit the Nazis.

But “Operation Mincemeat” is overall light on remorse and far more interested in intrigue, both political and romantic. Colin Firth plays Ewen Montagu, a former barrister who teams up with Charles Cholmondeley, played by Matthew Macfadyen, after hearing his plan to deceive Hitler by using forged papers attached to a corpse. In this bizarrely celebratory tale, the titular “mincemeat” is a troubling figure, weighing heavy on the conscience as the men who’ve enlisted him engage in petty infighting.

It might sound like the title for a gory, straight-to-video action movie, but Operation Mincemeat was a real World War II strategy – a secret Allied scheme ...

In Madden's version of the story, the committee selects the corpse of a vagrant (portrayed in flashback by Lorne MacFadyen) who drank himself to death on rat poison. Madden and cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov ( Their Finest) shoot in anamorphic wide-screen for that old-school feel, delivering the kind of war movie your grandpa would love (that's a compliment, especially in an era where too many films resemble over-lit television shows). The corpse drop is the brainchild of Firth's intelligence officer Ewen Montagu, a middle-aged judge who family and friends believe to be serving as a naval commander. The answer, of course, is obvious. A romantic triangle between Macfadyen, Firth and Macdonald, meanwhile, doesn't catch fire despite the actors' charms – and Firth, reliable as ever, and Macdonald, a long-underrated trouper, are both very good here. Allied forces are plotting a crucial invasion of Sicily, but in order to divert attention from the operation and give their troops the best chance at success, they're determined to leak information to Nazi intelligence about a bogus campaign launching in Greece.

He sits down with a bunch of pale important men to discuss British war strategy. The German fascists have a stronghold in Italy. The Brits want to pretend to ...

There are moments when the film lists a bit under the weight of a needless subplot or two (the my-brother-might-be-a-Russian-spy one, for example) at the expense of further quietly delightful interactions between Macdonald (showing complex character shades) and Firth (in a role Michael Caine might’ve played 25 years ago). And visually, it’s Just Fine, maybe making one wish for the vibrant indulgences of a Joe Wright endeavor. The film’s keenest irony is how it underscores the madness of the deception plan – which makes putting a message in a bottle and tossing it in the ocean a viable alternative – with British decorum, which all but demands that no one raise their voice or unbutton a collar despite the mighty, sweaty-bollocks tension of a situation. – for the sake of believability, and plan a series of maneuvers to get him into the hands of the murderous bastards who are their enemy, we learn about how sad our three principals are: Montagu’s strained marriage finds him taking a shine to the widow Leslie, although Cholmondeley is also interested in her, and single, and therefore the more viable romantic candidate despite his being an utter dorkwad. But none are more complicated than the wargames here – getting the Nazis to swallow their little corpse scheme, then hoping that they’re not onto the scheme and counterscheming with their own phony intelligence, and therefore only pretending to avert forces to Greece while actually remaining fortified in Sicily. And it’s even more complicated than that, believe it or not. It drops something in the water as battleships ready themselves for the thing that’s the first part of that compound word. A solemn Firth voiceover goes on about the seen and hidden battles of wartime, and he’s one who fights on a “battleground in shades of gray.” We see a submarine surface at nighttime.