Reviews

Saw as a ten-year-old sitting between my parents in our car at the Geronimo drive-in "theater" in a small army town in SW Arizona. At my age, the movie dragged a bit and I fell asleep only to wake up as the submarine cruises under the utterly empty Golden Gate Bridge. That scared me. Given my age, Hollywood portrayals seemed real. And this one wasn't far off! Then the empty streets hit home: this is what nuclear war could do.

Some have commented/complained about the differences between the movie and the book. Have read book and think both are great. "Leaving" Seattle for San Francisco was a good move for the visual effect of staring up those deathly, empty streets.

No CG in those days.

Have to agree with the first review (at least when I logged on) that the movie is inaccurate. It's laughable that a half-dozen cryptanalysts handled all the intercepted traffic. Actually, three round-the-clock shifts of 10,000 people worked in Ultra! The secret of Ultra started leaking out in 1967, hardly "more than half century." Decryption of German messages was uneven, to say the least. It required carelessness on the part of users; the Luftwaffe was the worst offender. Since Goering managed to control what should have been ground forces, this gave away army secrets as well.

At the movie's end, Turing is summarizing Ultra's contribution. The mention of Ardennes (aka, Battle of the Bulge) makes one wonder what the script writers really know. This was a monumental failure of Allied intelligence. The Axis were now using landlines and Hitler was keeping the operation largely to himself anyway. Ultra's greatest contribution was winning the war against the U-boats if only because this was foundational to all other efforts.