‘Operation Mincemeat’ Review: Colin Firth & Matthew Macfadyen Outsmart The Nazis In A WWII Potboiler

Operation Mincemeat was a covert British plan during World War II designed to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. To do this, two members of British intelligence disguised the body of an already-deceased man named Glyndwr Michael as an officer of the Royal Marines, a fictitious man named William Martin. They strategically placed manufactured correspondence on Michael’s body and dumped him on the southern coast of Spain, where he would be picked up by Spanish fishermen. A neutral government in the war at the time, Spain would share copies of the documents with the German military before returning the documents and the body to the British. These documents were designed to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies’ planned invasion of Sicily was a ruse, and that their actual targets were Greece and Sardinia.

An intricate plan with a great many moving parts and plenty of opportunities for disaster, Operation Mincemeat was by all accounts a success, averting the loss of numerous lives and helping pave the way for the eventual victory of the Allied forces. A crucial moment during the war, the less-than-flashy nature of the operation means that it hasn’t received the consistent cinematic accolades that something like D-Day has lined up over the years. “The Man Who Never Was,” a 1956 film from director Ronald Neame captured the events, picking up four BAFTA nominations and one win as a result, but hasn’t had the staying power to keep Mincemeat present in the public consciousness in the decades since. 

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Hoping to give the people responsible for this mission their due, John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”) has assembled an excellent cast to bring this story to cinematic life. It’s a noble effort, as the operation by design lacks the kind of confection and sheen of a “Saving Private Ryan” or “1917.” Written by Michelle Ashford (“John Adams,” “The Pacific”), Madden’s “Operation Mincemeat” falls in line with a run of these behind-the-scenes tales of wartime valor we’ve seen from the British of late, like “The Courier” and “Munich: The Edge of War.” It’s a film all about the efforts to use wit and cunning to maneuver around the enemy; to beat them without having to lose hundreds of men in the process in a bout of pure brute strength. 

It’s a film all about working smarter than your enemy, and for his own cause, Madden enlisted a reliable man for playing intelligence and stiff upper lip British perseverance, Colin Firth, to take on the leading role of Ewen Montagu. Montagu is teamed up to head the mission with Charles Cholmondeley, portrayed by Matthew Macfadyen, a man with no shortage of time playing lovable buffoons in film and television. In the early stages of ‘Mincemeat,’ we see these two finding their rhythm with one another, establishing a lock-step where they can put together the perfect plan. It’s thrilling in its way, not with the flash and pizzazz of your conventional wartime action thriller, but with the smooth operational procedure of a con or heist film. 

There is, admittedly, a sort of inherent stuffiness to the material — perhaps a laboriousness that Madden can’t seem to shake, a man whose work these days feels more suited to BBC miniseries than top-line awards baiting crowd-pleasers. It’s surprising that this ultimately landed as a feature film when it seems there is much more material here that could have made for a six-episode arc, although one supposes a Netflix release at the beginning of May for the new film from a man who once won a Best Picture Oscar in the ‘90s, with another Oscar winner in the leading role, is as much a sign of an industry that has no clue what to do with a movie like this in our current day than anything else. Despite the “men in suits behind closed doors” setup of the film, there is plenty of dramatic urgencies, especially in the first half. Thomas Newman’s score does quite a bit of heavy lifting here to give a propulsion to it all that Madden’s directing lacks. 

That razor-sharp precision in Montagu and Cholmondeley’s planning isn’t paralleled by the film’s structure, which one wonders if that might have been aided by fleshing this out into something more comprehensive. Early scenes lean into the fact that Ian Fleming (yes, that one) helped concoct the genesis of this plan, as we see here with Fleming played by Johnny Flynn. While Fleming is historically a necessary component of this story being told, there are a bit too many cheeky winks to the audience when we have him explaining why he calls his superior “M,” or a whole scene where the team visits Q-branch and Fleming is fascinated upon discovering a watch that also functions as a buzzsaw. This isn’t even getting into the fact that the film builds a framing device with Fleming writing, and narrating to the audience, the story we are seeing unfold. It ultimately feels a bit jarring within the context of what the core mission is here. 

This sensation applies twofold to the film’s most glaring issue, which is the inclusion of a love triangle that emerges between Montagu, Cholmondeley, and Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), who becomes part of the team essentially because Cholmondeley has a crush on her and uses the operation as a means to get more time to speak with her, which she then leverages for a spot on the team and a more hands-on role in the operation. The depiction of the character is all over the map, primarily serving as a silly way to forge a rift between the two men in order for there to be some dramatic obstacle there that never feels authentic, and certainly doesn’t feel as though it has a place within this story. 

When “Operation Mincemeat” is focusing on the nitty-gritty, the clinical elements of the operation and how these people hope to pull it off in a way that doesn’t get people killed, it can be thrilling. There’s something fascinating about a plan that is truly so ridiculous it just might work, and the no-nonsense performances of this capable cast do a great job at allowing us to believe them in these roles. Whenever the film starts to divert into following their personal foibles, however, the wheels come unstuck and you start to really feel its 130-minute running time. It’s the rare movie that might somehow be too long to function as the feature film it wants to be but could also have served itself better by being fleshed out for something more long-form — although who knows if more time would have ever gotten that love triangle to work. [B-]