Operation Mincemeat

An effective, old-school war drama with a top-notch cast and director that reveals the human story behind the greatest ruse in military history.

You may or may not have heard of Operation Mincemeat, one of the greatest con jobs ever pulled. It fooled Adolf Hitler about where Allied forces were going to attack Nazi-controlled Europe. It’s often mistakenly associated with D-day, but in fact the ruse was used a year earlier to trick the Germans into thinking they were going to attack Greece instead of the most obvious target, Sicily, in 1943.

The deception was seemingly simple, yet intricate: drop a dead body dressed as a British officer along with coastline with papers indicating the attack will fall in Greece, hoping they would wind up in German hands. But as the story shows — screenplay by Michelle Ashford, based on the book by Ben Macintyre — it involved hundreds of cleverly concocted steps by unheralded British spies.

“Operation Mincemeat” stars a splendid cast of top-notch actors: Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Johnny Flynn, Penelope Wilton and Jason Isaacs. It was directed by John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,” “Miss Sloane”) as an old-school but effective war drama that’s about the schemers in the domestic bunkers rather than the doughboys on the front lines.

It’s a small picture that seems very grand, as literally hundreds of thousands of lives and the fate of World War II lies in the balance.

This story was previously made into the 1956 movie, “The Man Who Never Was.” That film was more concerned with the aftermath, when German spies were dispatched to London to try to determine whether the whole thing was a sham.

This movie instead focuses on the personalities and relationships of the key Brit spooks, the skepticism they faced from their own commanders and the hurdles they had to leap past to make the fake Royal Marines major seem real.

Firth plays Ewen Montagu, the veteran spy who’s a bit of a black sheep among his peers. Certainly he is not well-liked by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the head of military intelligence. Godfrey has been tasked by Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) with coming up a series of ideas to fool the Germans, compiled into something known as the Trout Memo.

(Spy stories love their clever code names: Trout Memo, the Haversack Ruse, etc.)

A lawyer by training and trade, Montagu approaches the mission like a case against a worthy adversary, trying to think how they would think and always stay one step ahead. Meanwhile, he is dealing with personal issues, chiefly a growing estrangement with his wife, who is sent to the States along with their children to ensure their safety, since they are Jewish (while he is not).

His longtime wingwoman is Hester Leggett (Wilton), who heads up the secretary corp of translators, wiretap listeners and other functionaries whose behind-the-scenes work is critical. Her relationship with Montagu is closer to old friends than superior/subordinate, and she also maintains a close relationship with his wife.

Godfrey thinks the whole idea of using a dead body is too fantastical, but gives Montagu the assignment mostly as way to get him out of his hair. His partner is Charles Cholmondely (Macfadyen), a pilot grounded for his “big feet and poor eyesight.” He’s a bit of a fussbudget and a wonk, not to mention an aging bachelor whose mother hectors him for not getting a wife or retrieving the body of his brother, a “real” hero who died overseas.

As they go about their plans, Cholmondely enlists the aid of Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), who works in the intelligence office and whom he is keen on. He asks for her photograph as one of the items of fake provenance they will place on the body, in this case his fictional fiancee. She agrees, but only if she’s allowed to join the team.

Chronicling the story as narrator is Ian Fleming (Flynn), the young assistant to Godfrey who actually came up with much of the Trout Memo himself. If that name sounds familiar, yes it is the very same author of the James Bond novels, who really did play such a role in military history. Here he stays mostly in the background tap-tap-tapping on his typewriter. There’s even a running joke that half the intelligence authors are secretly vying to be novelists.

The movie clocks through the various steps of the deception process: finding an appropriate body, coming up with an entire personal and military background for the fictitious “Maj. William Martin,” making plans to have it photographed and placed in a steel canister filled with dry ice and loaded aboard a submarine, writing the love letter from his girl, and especially the bit of military correspondence that contains the mention of a Greek invasion.

All along, Montagu and Cholmondely have to intuit how to make it all some like a providential accident rather than an obvious Trojan horse. This includes investigating the various German spies who will likely be involved in the case to predict how they will react. The key information should be obfuscated just enough to make it seem just one tiny piece of the puzzle, but not so hidden that it is goes undiscovered.

Complicating things are the personal friendships and antagonisms that grow within the tiny team of spies. Cholmondely is dismayed when Montagu and Jean begin seeing other outside of work, spoiling his own chance at romance. They in turn must navigate their feelings in a relationship that is platonic on the surface, but with deeper tides of emotion roiling underneath. Hester, while corresponding with Montagu’s wife through letters, tries to remain neutral and supportive, understanding that wartime pushes people in strange directions.

There’s also a subplot involving Montagu’s ne’er-do-well brother, Ivor (Mark Gatiss), with Godfrey sticking his nose in by leaning on Cholmondely. It raises the question: can one remain an upstanding patriot while engaged in spycraft, which is by its nature dishonorable?

“Operation Mincemeat” works so well because it balances the machinations of the spy story plot with the inner lives of the foursome of collaborators. In working so hard to fool so many people, these spies were often capable of fooling themselves.

There are the “big” histories, which tell you what happened and why these events were so important, and then there are the little stories behind them, not so straightforward and full of human failings.