Plot
During World War II the British army is attempting to retrieve an Enigma machine from Germany. Having failed in previous attempts they decide to send four men undercover to the factory that makes the devices, deep in Berlin. Unfortunately the factory is populated entirely by women, and they only have men to send.
American O'Rourke (LeBlanc) teams with British transvestite Tony Parker (Izzard), genius Johnno (Birken) and the reluctant Archie (Cosmo). The four are sent to infiltrate the factory dressed as women.
Dropped in the wrong area, the team must first try to find their bearings. Aided by Romy, a sympathiser to their cause, they find their way to the factory. They manage to retrieve the Enigma machine, against the expectations of the British army. Just before they leave Germany, they realize they were tricked – the British government already had the device, but wanted to make the Germans think they were still after it. They were specifically chosen as the team most likely to fail. That they are about to successfully leave Germany with an Enigma machine would, in fact, destroy the usefulness of the machine, as the Germans would know it was stolen and switch to a different code system. Archie volunteers to be captured with the machine to allow the mission to "fail". After he is captured, the team retrieves him and all return safely to England, leaving the German with the impression they have all the Enigma machines and the British are still desperate to obtain one.
Read more about this topic: All The Queen's Men
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)