Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, and Kelly Macdonald star in Netflix film about secret mission.
“Some are absolutely insane, and some are less insane.
“The funny thing is that everybody is accounted for.
Operation Mincemeat.Giles Keyte/See-Saw Films/Netflix
You couldn’t just go in and take bodies.
It turned out finding a body that nobody would claim, that’s what was hard.
I think they all knew it was kind of crazy.”
Operation Mincemeat.Giles Keyte/See-Saw Films/Netflix
The name of the plan had a predictably gruesome origin.
“The Mincemeat files, and I’m not exaggerating, they stand about 5 feet tall.
At some points, you could piece together what happens almost minute-by-minute.
Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen in ‘Operation Mincemeat’.Giles Keyte/See-Saw Films/Netflix
And, unlike most government files, they are honest, because they were never meant to be released.
“That contained all the material that Montagu had effectively stolen from MI5,” says Macintyre.
So he extracted the files, which isexactlywhat you’re not supposed to do.”
Operation Mincemeat.Giles Keyte/See-Saw Films/Netflix
Michelle Ashford read, and loved, Macintyre’s book shortly after it was published.
“I got really excited,” says the screenwriter.
“It’s not like I was absolutely yearning to make a Second World War story.
I mean, many, many, many of those films have been made.
But it’s one that actually incorporates some of the qualities that a lot of those films had.
That’s the real brilliance I think of this.
They’ve managed to retain the absurd elements of this, to which the protagonists were extremely alive.
“I got very teary at the end and I was shocked by that,” says Ashford.
Operation Mincemeatwas released in U.K. cinemas last month and premieres on Netflix in the U.S. May 11.
Watch the trailer below.
