'The Courier' Review: Review: Wrapping a Cold War Chapter in Comforting Clichés (2024)

Though its tale of espionage and international intrigue is based on a true story, The Courier is less interested in exploring the complex realities of the Cold War than in regurgitating some of the more tired artistic tropes about the era. This is a film that sees life behind the Iron Curtain as a grim purgatory where no one ever smiles and the sun never shines—a stark contrast to the liberal paradises of the U.S. and U.K., where the only clear and present threat to its citizens’ lives of middle-class contentment is the nuclear bomb.

Indeed, much of Dominic Cooke’s plodding film feels as if it’s been cribbed from other, more potent works about shadowy, Soviet-era intelligence. Bridge of Spies is an especially obvious touchpoint, as the The Courier is not only set against the same historical backdrop of escalating nuclear tensions as Steven Spielberg’s spy drama, but it also boasts a drained color palette that feels like a calculated appeal to History Channel aficionados. Even the opening sequence, in which high-ranking G.R.U. officer Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) passes along secrets of the Soviet nuclear program to unsuspecting American tourists, feels like a half-hearted reworking of the bravura, nearly wordless sequence that kicks off Spielberg’s film.

After Penkovsky’s secret documents reach the British and Americans, MI6 and the C.I.A. jointly recruit Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a British businessman with extensive contacts in Eastern Europe, to travel to Moscow and encourage Penkovsky (codename “Ironbark,” which was this film’s original title) to reveal more information. Wynne soon becomes a regular visitor to Russia, ferrying thousands of top-secret files back to the U.K., some of which are credited with helping to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Wynne, a complete neophyte in the espionage game—Tom O’Connor’s screenplay completely ignores the real-life Wynne’s claims that he began working for MI6 as early as World War II—is trained in the ways of spycraft by Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan), his handlers for MI6 and the C.I.A., respectively. These scenes evoke Edward Zwick’s The Russia House, but with Sean Connery’s louche, whiskey-soaked bookseller turned secret agent replaced by Cumberbatch’s impossibly stolid businessman spy.

It’s not clear what the audience is supposed to make of Wynne, and that’s ultimately The Courier’s biggest flaw. We’re told that he’s a hard drinker with a history of unfaithfulness to his wife, Sheila (Jessie Buckley), and we get scenes of Wynne and Penkovsky partying it up at a London nightclub that hint at a playboy-ish side to our hero’s personality. But Cumberbatch’s bottled-up performance never taps into Wynne’s apparent rakishness, playing him instead as an eminently conventional family man with no particularly notable attributes.

The result is an ill-defined and contradictory protagonist whose lack of strong personal qualities might make him an effective spy, but it doesn’t make him an especially compelling one. By comparison, there’s deftness to the way the film parallels the burgeoning friendship between Wynne and Penkovsky with the strain that Wynne’s secret life increasingly places on his marriage as his wife begins to suspect that her husband’s mysterious trips to Moscow may be cover for an affair. But even as both relationships come under increasing threat from the Soviets, who begin to suspect a traitor in their midst, Cooke’s blandly competent direction does little to ramp up the tension on either a personal or a geopolitical level.

Advertisement

Only after Wynne and Penkovsky are locked up by the Russians does The Courier begin to work up a head of steam on the style front, but it’s obvious that Cooke is overcompensating for the sedateness of the film’s first two-thirds with no small amount of showboating. Canted angles, dramatic shadows, and fish-eye lens shots lend the interrogation scenes a certain theatricality, but they also serve to underscore the insipidness of the film’s conception of Cold War politics.

Penkovsky and Wynne are allowed a face-to-face meeting, in which the G.R.U. apostate delivers the requisitely rosy take-home message: “We are just two people, but we can change the world.” Perhaps that platitude is true on some level, but given the nature of the relationships between the K.G.B., C.I.A., and MI6 during the Ironbark saga, it feels as if a more complex lesson about the possibilities for peace in the face of great-power rivalry has been conspicuously elided. And a film like The Courier, one that’s content to wrap a chapter in Cold War history in comforting clichés, doesn’t possess the nuance to suss out such difficult truths.

Score:

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley, Merab Ninidze, Angus Wright, Kirill Pirogov, Keir Hills, Jonathan Harden, Aleksandr Kotjakovs, Olga Koch Director: Dominic Cooke Screenwriter: Tom O’Connor Distributor: Roadside Attractions Running Time: 111 min Rating: PG-13 Year: 2020 Buy: Video, Soundtrack

If you can, please consider supporting Slant Magazine.

Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.

If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.

'The Courier' Review: Review: Wrapping a Cold War Chapter in Comforting Clichés (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Chrissy Homenick

Last Updated:

Views: 5333

Rating: 4.3 / 5 (54 voted)

Reviews: 85% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Chrissy Homenick

Birthday: 2001-10-22

Address: 611 Kuhn Oval, Feltonbury, NY 02783-3818

Phone: +96619177651654

Job: Mining Representative

Hobby: amateur radio, Sculling, Knife making, Gardening, Watching movies, Gunsmithing, Video gaming

Introduction: My name is Chrissy Homenick, I am a tender, funny, determined, tender, glorious, fancy, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.