The Assassination Game Movie Analysis

IR Movie Review
The Imitation Game

This movie was set in 1951, where Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), questioned by MI6 agent. The movie then took us to World War II when British were at the verge of losing to Axis power. The Axis had the upper hand at that time because of its advance technologies in 1939. Being one of them was the Enigma. Enigma is cryptology machine that made information intercepted by Allies would do no good for them. Enigma’s “code” changed daily, made breaking the intercepted message highly impossible. Not to mention with 10 rotors on it, the enigma had 159.000.000.000.000.000.000 different combination possibilities. If calculated, with 10 people working to crack the code every day, it would take 20 years to try each

This influences the decision made by the actors in the movie. A few examples are when Turing’s team already figured out the positions of Germans’ U-Boats and navy located, and predicted that there would be an attack carried against civilian’s ship. Peter, whose brother was in the ship, pushed Turing to call London, but Turing afraid by alerting London would in turn alerted Germans to the fact that Enigma has been solved. Therefore, London and allies did not intervene and civilians were killed in that attack. This reflected Statism principle of realism Theory. Statism means that State is the main actor of International affairs and other actors as well as their interests are insignificant compared to States’. Here, Peter’s brother was “sacrificed” for the bigger interest of State, which is to win the

Zero-sum game is the notion in realism theory where ones gain an advantage then the other loses one. For a moment, German was the holding of “one” and the allies holds “zero” with the Enigma. However, when Turing’s team broke the code and Germans still think that the Enigma was unsolvable then the allies turned the table and hold more advantage against Germany. At the end, with this “one”, Allies could beat German in WWII.
Another example realism theory is reflected to how MI6 deliberately put Soviet Spy inside Turing’s Team in hope that Turing can help MI6 to filter information that is leaked to Uni Soviet. This is included in zero-sum game theory also, where London gained “one” for its ability to select which information that is worth being leaked to the Soviet without having to lose “one” over leaked information.
Another International Relation theories that is being exposed are Constructivism and Feminism, although is not directly related to State and can be called as the “side dish”. Constructivism is shown through the notion that Joan had to deal with when she showed up and declared that she was able to solve the puzzle. The other, who was all male, underestimated Joan because social construct at that time dictated that women are less smart than male. However, Joan proved her ability and therefore presenting Feminism ideology in the movie, being the only female member in Turing’s