Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: Operation Mincemeat [DVD] [2022]

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2022

I read Ben Macintyre’s book years ago which I found fascinating. That led me to seek out and watch The Man Who Never Was - the 1956 film about Operation Mincemeat which I thought was an exceptional film - really enjoyable. As a fan of the story and this period of history, I was therefore really keen to see this remake.
Sadly I found it overwhelmingly disappointing. The cast was great, but I thought Kelly Macdonald - an actress I admire - appeared to be in agony with her English accent to the point that it distracted her from the role. Perhaps allowing her to run with her natural Scottish accent would have been wiser than making mincemeat (sorry) of 1940s RP!
The other major distraction for me was the music that ran under 80-90% of the film which felt completely unnecessary and diluted the drama; not sure why it was so annoying but it did have the effect of making the whole thing feel like an extended trailer.
The love story element felt laboured and also - unnecessary… It’s such an incredible story that highlights a time of desperation breeding innovation - it needs little elaboration.
Overall - an amazing true story but retold in a much watered down non-authentic way. I felt the original book and 1956 film had more power and drama than this remake.

49 people found this helpful

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Dr Andy Towle

Tedious rubbish. The 1953 movue us much better.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2022

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Excruciatingly bad script, tedious love triangle, bolted on American involvement and made up Abwehr agent visiting one of the protaganists in 1943 London. Naval attache giving out hand relief to two people was as close as it git to humour. Period detail had more holes than cheesecloth. The worst movie I have seen in years. Dull as ditchwater- which given the source material is some achievement. And the most expensive movie rental in a while. Avoid.

32 people found this helpful

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Explorer

I want my money back

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 June 2022

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I was really looking forward to seeing this film.

Alas, it is a poorly scripted and turgid love triangle, with the true story of one of the greatest strategic deceptions trailing along in the background.

If you are looking for a case study of how to take a great cast and storey and make an appalling film this is for you.

It is hard to understand what the makers were trying to do. It appears that they set out to traduce the reputations of people who served their country with distinction. Everyone involved in making this film should be ashamed.

I am amazed at all the five star reviews, but when you read them most of them are one liners. I am not sure they saw the same film as me. Maybe they watched the 1950’s version, which is what I would recommend anyone considering watching this film to do.

24 people found this helpful

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O McNeir

Operation mincemeat - very apt title

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 June 2022

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We were looking forward to seeing some of our favourite actors - Firth, McFadayen, Wilton, Jennings, Flynn, Russell-Beale - in a high-quality period piece. What could go wrong when all the content was provided by true events? Well, pretty much everything. Lousy editing didn't help. Hopelessly miscast Macdonald. Ben Macintyre must be bewildered, but not half as much as the actors when they sat down to the premiere of this career-sponging nonsense. I mean, did director Madden (Oscar-winning director!) fall asleep or something? I realise I'm ranting, but sorry, this isn't good enough. These wonderful actors and this director have high benchmarks - The King's Speech, Any Human Heart, The Crown, A Dance to the Music of Time, Best Exotic, Shakespeare in Love - they didn't deserve this. What went wrong?

19 people found this helpful

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M. J. P

Complete disappointment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2022

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Waited for months for this to be released - wish I hadn't bothered. Watched once now in charity shop pile.

For anyone who hasn't read the superb Ben Macintyre book, this film might be of passing interest. If you have read the book (and if you have any interest in the intrigues of WW2 'spy' world) you will spend a lot of time shouting at the screen.

The true story of Mincemeat ( as told in Macintyre's book) is layer upon layer of meticulous planning and subterfuge. The film somehow manages to wiz though all this in great broad strokes and instead concentrates on wholly fictious side issues.
We see Ewen Montagu mooning around chasing 'Pam'. In real life they just played their parts to add to background of the 'Major Martin' story being put together.

Then out of the blue, some unknown bloke turns up at 'Pam's' house making all sorts of threats. Unknown because he just didn't exist - just thrown in by the film makers to 'spice things up' maybe.
Then they shoe-horned in a bit of smut in the form of a British official having to preform a (totally factious) homosexual act on an enemy agent.

Even the actors - and there are some of our finest - seem to be at a loss. Mathew MacFadyen tries his best to play the role, but the great Colin Firth looks totally fed up with the whole thing and just reads out his lines. He's probably read the true story and's thinking Why oh Why did I agree to put my name to this load of bilge.

If you do buy this and after watching it think ?eh? I would strongly advise buying the Ben Macintyre book and reading the utter fascinating true story of Mincemeat.

ps. the only credit to the makers is the final 30 seconds showing the memorial stone - that bit was indeed quite moving.

12 people found this helpful

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St Colms

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2022

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I read and enjoyed the book on which this film is based but I was disappointed by the film itself. It has a number of sub plots which I don't think were in the original book and the casting is stuffed full of god old British character actors one knows from other wartime movies and TV series like Downton Abbey. Even Colin Firth is much better in other films than he is here ( Just compare this with his masterly performance in The Staircase). Priced at just over £15 it is quite an expensive night in.

13 people found this helpful

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GillM

An excellent story well presented

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2022

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Having read Ben Macintyre's book I was really looking forward to seeing this. It didn't disappoint, although as expected, it didn't go into as much detail as the book. This is understandable as they only had about an hour and a half to cram the story in. They did manage to include all the important parts of the story in a really entertaining way with an excellent cast. The only issue for me was that, from my memory of the book, the love story didn't really happen. That aside, I really enjoyed it. Well done.

7 people found this helpful

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A COMPELLING WATCH BASED ON REAL EVENTS

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2022

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A World War 2 drama based on real events in 1943 ..A Brit film starring -
Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu
Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Cholmondeley
Kelly Macdonald as Jean Leslie
Penelope Wilton as Hester Leggett
Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming
Jason Isaacs as Admiral John Godfrey and
Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill
The Twenty Committee recently joined by Montagu and his secretary Hester
are instructed to devise a plot to deceive the enemy over the planned assault
of Siclaly.
They come up with an outrageous plan to plant the body of someone that had
drowned on a strategic beach where it would most likely fall into the hands of
German high command.
The committee would have to invent a false identity for the corpse giving it
credibility of importance coupled with an attached briefcase with false but
credible assault plans within.
Could this really fool the enemy ?
If it did an assault could certainly minimise the loss of life
A film that builds into an interesting and compelling watch.
I feel sure that there is many an untold story yet to surface.

3 people found this helpful

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A FABULOUSLY FAULTLESS SPY STORY, SPOILT BY FICTITIOUS ROMANCE.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 July 2022

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This is a review (which CONTAINS SPOILERS) of the July 2022 All Region Blu-ray from Warner Brothers. Technically, it is a high quality product. It does however, come without any extras.

There are many excellent films, British and American, about various WW2 operations and campaigns that offered maximum opportunities for the Allied advancement of the War, but also presented maximum jeopardy. Inevitably, major actions involving large numbers of troops and quantities of materiel had the potential to drive back the Axis powers. But if they went badly, the Allied reversal could be catastrophic. These stories make excellent subjects for films: you do not have to invent the high stakes or extreme tension.

Having largely taken control of North Africa by May 1943, the Allies planned to move north to Europe. The US wanted an immediate cross-Channel operation, but the British saw several advantages in delaying that. Instead, they advocated spearheading the Allied effort on Sicily and then into southern Italy. But as it was also an obvious target, Axis forces were well-prepared and lying in wait, spelling potential disaster for the Allies. British Intelligence, one of the TRUELY GREAT success stories of Britain's war effort, set about trying to persuade the Germans we would attack elsewhere. Of the many strands of this difficult task, the one portrayed in this film, the real-life ‘Operation Mincemeat’, was probably the most successful and certainly the most bizarre.

'Mincemeat' has appeared on film before, as the interesting but slightly pedestrian British film ‘The Man Who Never Was’(1956). That in turn was based on an account of the operation under the same title, written in 1953 by the officer behind the plan, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu RN. Montagu wrote his book at the behest of British Intelligence, after a fictional account, closely mirroring the truth, appeared in a novel by a politician, who had been briefed on 'Mincemeat'.

This new film is based on a 2010 book about 'Mincemeat' by historian Ben Macintyre. It has the advantage that the man who really WAS ‘the man who never was’, Glyndwr Michael, was finally identified by an amateur historian, in 1996. Unlike in 1956, this allows the 2022 film to give us the real story behind the corpse which arrived on the Spanish coast in April 1943, as Major William Martin RM. There are still some small inaccuracies, such as the identity of the man used for the document photos of Major Martin. This feeds into an entirely fictional sub-plot of a triangular love interest between three of the main 'Mincemeat' team members.

Beautifully and persuasively filmed in London, Spain and Saunton Sands, Devon (standing in for Sicily), fabulously authentic to look at, and meticulously explained, this is a really superior, very British, film. It is filled to the brim with serious British talent, giving their all. The plot, care of Ewen Montagu and his 1943 team, is majestically complex, and you need your wits about you to follow its superbly snaking coils.

Regretfully, I do have one BIG gripe: with a story this deliciously convoluted, and genuine, WHY add a totally fictitious (and wholly unconvincing) romance? I consider this SUCH an error of judgement, that I am deducting a Star. Which is a pity, because otherwise, the film is faultless.

One person found this helpful

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Mooncarrot the Hare

Trading on an empty bank account

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 July 2022

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It’s a mercy that those involved in the real wartime operation are no longer alive to watch this rendering of themselves and their achievements.

Those among the audience who are not familiar with the basics of the story are likely to be puzzled by the first twenty minutes of this production. Then there are numerous fictional additions the scriptwriters have used to make the story ‘relevant’ to today’s audience. These must do a great disservice to the real people.

However, the past is not today. The standard shorthand way scriptwriters have of conveying British society of the 1940s is to have the characters light up the occasional cigarette. The use of the F-word would have been deeply shocking to people of that time in a way that people today could not begin to appreciate. Yet it is used in this film much like it is used today. The sex scenes are now obligatory in all films, perhaps as a reminder that sex was invented in 1962.

The original film was called The Man Who Never Was. There are men who never were in this production. There’s the unknown German agent in Britain: unknown because he didn’t exist any more than did Major Martin. Is he added so that audiences can be reminded in the lines given to one of the officers that there were Nazi sympathisers in Britain (all of whom were on ‘holiday’ on the Isle of Man at that time)? In the original film, this fictional agent was part of an Irish Republican network. Such a representation today would perhaps be too ‘offensive’.

There is the addition of the American GI lover, added presumably as a visual demonstration that the operation saved lives. This is a ‘Janet and John’ presentation of the story.

Churchill is made to look and sound like an Edwardian bishop in civvies. Some of the actors, such as Jason Isaacs, were perhaps chosen because they can do the ‘posh’ accent that is evidently thought good enough to represent how people spoke at that time. It’s always entertaining to see Nicholas Rowe appear in a film. He has come a long way since Young Sherlock and his interview with Terry Wogan on the latter’s BBC1 chat show in the 1980s. However, one might wonder if he thought he would eventually have to act the sort of sordid scene he has to in this film.

There are only some 160,000 people who were adults during the War left still alive in Britain today. This film is a statement, if any were needed, that Britain’s bank account from her Second World War activities, as remarkable as they were in many ways, is now empty. How much longer can Britain trade on the sort of overdraught of legend and myth that this telling of the story represents?

Does legend honour the dead? Does myth really do justice to those who have passed, and those who will soon pass, into the shadow where memory is unknown? Does our revelling in the glory won by others, if glory it was, make us glorious?

One person found this helpful

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5 star		57%
4 star		20%
3 star		13%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

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