Cumberbatch delivers as an everyman on a mission
You’ve seen it all before. And yet that doesn’t make the spycraft celebrated in Cold War espionage thriller “The Courier” — or the film itself — any less compelling.
More competent than inventive, ‘The Courier” benefits from a strong performance of lead Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as the work supporting player Merab Ninidze, in telling a story about the bond between an everymanturned-spy and the Russian officer-turned-Western asset he tried to help.
Based on a true story, “The Courier” begins in 1960, as the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union has intensified.
A Soviet military colonel, Oleg Penkovsky (Ninidze) believes Nikita
Khrushchev is courting a confrontation with America and is a great danger to the world.
Oleg spots two American tourists on the streets of Moscow and asks them to take a letter he’s written to the U.S. embassy. One agrees.
Cut to MI6 headquarters in London, where a CIA operative, Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan), visits her counterparts.
“I brought you boys a present,” she says, giving them the letter, in which Oleg says he fears nuclear war is coming and that he wants to help prevent it.
Emily’s hoping England can provide someone who could pass information to and from Oleg in person. Enter Cumberbatch’s Greville Wynne, a mild-mannered businessman.
“I’m just a salesman,” Greville says in a subsequent meeting with Rachel and one of the Brits, Dickie Franks (Angus Wright). “Exactly,” Emily says. Greville is reluctant, but agrees to be their courier.
In Moscow and working through Oleg’s official capacity, Greville grows fond of his Russian counterpart and vice versa.
So comfortable with Greville is Oleg that when the former has served his initial purpose, the latter insists he stay involved with the ongoing effort. He really wants to be done with the affair, but Emily gives him the hard, nuclear-based sell.
“Truly, we’ll be better off if he doesn’t do it,” Dickie says afterward.
“He’ll do it,” Emily counters.
She’s right, of course, and from here the web only gets more dangerous for both Greville and Oleg, as the backdrop for their work becomes the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
“The Courier” is rather skillfully penned by Tom O’Connor (“The Hitman’s Bodyguard”), who found Wynne to be little more than a footnote in a book he was reading that was dealing with the much-better-known Penkovsky.
Setting aside exactly how accurate the story told in “The Courier” is, it is fairly gripping, much of the credit for that belonging to director Dominic Cooke (“On Chesil Beach”). There is little fat to be found here, although the film does lose a bit of momentum after it takes a necessary sharp turn for its final act.
As he so often is, Cumberbatch (“The Imitation Game,” “Doctor Strange”) is quite good. His work is understated but believable as the pressures of the citation begin to get to Greville
And you instantly become invested in Oleg thanks to Ninidze (“Nowhere in Africa”). Oleg almost always is calm, collected and altogether stoically Russian, so when Ninidze allows us to see the panic flowing beneath the surface, we know the situation is serious.
“The Courier” (rated PG-13) feels determined never to go over-the-top in its telling of this highstakes story, which you certainly can appreciate.
Yes, you’ve seen it all before — and you’ve seen it done bigger — but this is well worth seeing nonetheless.