Europe is on the brink of loosening Hilter’s grip on Occupied Europe in War thriller drama Operation Mincemeat. John Madden directs this one (Best exotic marigold hotel, Miss Sloane), starring Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen. The tide of war changed all thanks to a dead body?!

It’s 1943. The Allies plan one last all-out assault on the Nazis via Sicily. They face an impossible challenge how to protect a massive invasion force from potential massacre. That challenge falls to two intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) to create the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war. Using the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man. Operation Mincemeat is the true story of an idea that hoped to alter the course of the war defying logic, risking countless thousands of lives, and testing the nerves of its creators to breaking point.

A totally bonkers name Operation Mincemeat, used instead of the generic Operation Trojan Horse.

It’s a story using the body of a homeless Welsh man Glyndwr Michael who commited suicide and looked like someone closest to drowning . Cholmondeley , Montagu and Kelly McDonland’s MI5 Clerk Jean Leslie decide create a fake life for the man who is now called Major William Martin of Britain’s Royal Marines , Jean pretends to be Williams fictional fiancée , most importnt is can they convince the Nazi’s it’s Greece not Sicily they are about to invade and dumping the now dead body just off the shore of Spain in hope the body end up in the facist but ‘neutral’ Spanish with hope the documents end up in Berlin.

You get the sense of the tension, in a side of the World War II we don’t usually see as it’s in the dark smoke filled back or basement rooms of government buildings . We also see the grief and guilt the war brought to many affected by that war. Plenty of intrigue, even a potential romance between love trianagle between our leading men with Jean. There is also a big slice of humour, lighthearted, absurd especially when they try to take photograph of our homeless man, who is already decomposing like a scene from Shaun Of The Dead was an Ealing comedy.

Strong cast who carry the film well, however there is times script struggles to pick the direction it wants to go especially on the deception of the dead body. It tries too hard to fit a a lot into the script and the strain shows. It’s an entertainment level that purely focus on the story forgetting the secondary characters. One moment if Mark Gaitass character who plays Ewan’s brother and is accussed of being a communist, the story ended there.

One nice little side note is Johnny Flynn’s character who plays a certain young Iain Fleming, the same man who would go onto write books on the greatest ever fictional spy James Bond. He is one of the brainchild’s of the operation, at times he’s in the background writing away the early novels with the people around him inspiring his novels, this film might leave fans of 007 with big grins on their faces.

★★★