Calling all dads! Operation Mincemeat is a new, prestigious World War II drama with a trailer that looks about as dad-friendly as a movie trailer can get. But wait! Moms, you're invited too, as the two leading actors, Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen, have both previously played mom heartthrob Mr. Darcy in different adaptations of Pride and Prejudice! And if neither of these qualities do it for you, um, can we interest you in a stealth James Bond origin story?
Based on a remarkably unusual, true story written about in a book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat features an Allied effort to turn the tides of the war in Sicily, a hotbed of Nazi occupation. To pull an invasion off, two intelligence officers (Firth and Macfadyen, natch) come up with a wild, deception-laden plan involving the use of a dead man as a kind of agent/asset. Among the many consequences of this operation, one Mr. Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn) finds inspiration for a new kind of spy story that he just might name James Bond...
The film comes from director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) and writer Michelle Ashford (The Pacific). Other cast members include Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men), Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey), Jason Isaacs, and Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill (the latter two of which are reuniting for another unorthodox historical conflict film after sparring in The Death of Stalin).
Operation Mincemeat will stream on Netflix at an as-of-yet unspecified release date (though it plays in UK cinemas on January 7, 2022). Check out the trailer and official synopsis below.
It’s 1943. The Allies are determined to break Hitler’s grip on occupied Europe, and plan an all-out assault on Sicily; but they face an impossible challenge - how to protect a massive invasion force from potential massacre. It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) to dream the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war - centred on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man. Operation Mincemeat is the extraordinary and 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.