Mostly gripping – and boasts not one but two Mr Darcys: Operation Mincemeat reviewed

Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper called ‘the most spectacular single episode in the history of deception’. It is so spectacular that the film doesn’t have to do much aside from tell it, and that’s what it does, straightforwardly, plainly, no bells and whistles. It’s a classic tale of British second world war derring-do and the sort of film you’ll watch with your dad on a Sunday afternoon, before or after Ice Cold in Alex. Plus it has a terrific cast that includes not one but two Mr Darcys (Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen).

It’s 1943 when British Intelligence comes up with the idea of finding a corpse, dressing him up as a Royal Marine officer and then dumping him at sea off the Spanish coast with ‘top secret’ papers planted on the body suggesting that the Allied invasion would take place in Greece, as a smokescreen for the real, planned invasion of Sicily. The hope was that this information would make its way to German intelligence, clearing a path through Italy. It is a mad plan. Nuts. It’ll never work. But… could it?

The main characters are two British intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Macfadyen) although it’s posited here that the original idea came from another officer working within intelligence at the time, a certain Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn). They find their corpse. It’s Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welshman who died from ingesting rat poison. He’s given the fictitious identity of Captain William ‘Bill’ Martin and now they must populate his ‘wallet litter’. That is, the items to be found on his body to make him appear convincing: a shop receipt, keys, a photograph of his fiancée, Pam.