Mark Reviews Movies: THE COURIER (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 18, 2021

One man knows how to spy, being an agent for military intelligence in the Soviet Union. The other has no clue, since he's simply a British businessman who drinks too much, was kept away from combat during World War II, and couldn't hide an affair from his wife. That's the dynamic of the main characters in The Courier, which begins with a light, almost comedic tone but gradually transforms into a study of courage under pressure and, more importantly, friendship.

Tom O'Connor's screenplay comes from a true story, namely the life of Greville Wynne, who was recruited by MI6 just before the height of the Cold War in 1960. Wynne was recruited because of his regular business trips to Eastern Europe, providing an almost-perfect cover for a spy going to and from Moscow at regular intervals.

In the film, Greville (Benedict Cumberbatch) is also recruited because he seems such an unlikely spy. A man with only business on his mind and a routine of knocking them back at barroom business meetings, the Soviets might only start to suspect Greville when it becomes too late. All he has to do is keep up appearances and his reputation, and it helps that representatives of both MI6 and the CIA strongly insinuate that his work might help to stop a nuclear catastrophe.

It's all a matter of math and geography. It'll take four minutes for a nuclear missile to reach London from the Soviet Union. With his propensity for travel, Greville could be anywhere when that happens, and his son's school is a 15-minute drive from home. The timing doesn't matter, because the agencies know about the bomb shelters any member of his family could reach. Any of those particular shelters won't help in the slightest.

O'Connor and director Dominic Cooke frame Greville's exploits as a matter of potentially world-changing import, and it's very possible that's true. His contact in Moscow is Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), a man trusted within the GRU, with access to every military secret in the Soviet Union.

Oleg considers himself a patriot, but he sees the looming threat of nuclear war as a call to a higher purpose—the salvation of humanity from two countries that cannot stop building up stockpiles of nuclear weapons. He suspects Nikita Khrushchev is irresponsible and volatile enough to be the one to bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation—and possibly push it over the edge. Oleg would be proven correct in less than two years.

All of this is, of course, dreadfully serious business, so it is a bit of a surprise to watch Greville's early adventures in the spy game treated with relative levity. He may not bumble his way through meetings with Dickie Franks (Angus Wright)—from MI6—and Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan)—from the CIA. Greville does, though, take them almost as a joke at first—either on him, as some kind of prank, or on them, because their effectiveness is clearly a question if they sincerely think he's cut out to be a spy.

When he finally meets Oleg in Moscow, Greville is at a loss at how to proceed with whatever it is he's supposed to be doing. In a moment away from the constant state surveillance in Moscow, Oleg lets Greville know he just has to deliver some documents to London. It's better if he doesn't know what those documents are and what they might mean for the fate of the planet. They're both already in danger—Oleg especially, since he sees first-hand what happens to anyone convicted of treason, which his actions clearly are.

Smartly, the film lets the real spies from MI6 and CIA, as well as their higher-ups, do all the talking about the political ramifications and strategic responses to the information Greville receives from Oleg. From them, we get the wider context of Greville's work and Oleg's righteous betrayal. Eventually, the two men get intelligence about Khrushchev's plans to ship nuclear weapons to Cuba, which leads to a famous crisis that, here, plays out mostly in the background. We don't necessarily need a recap of that event, so the filmmakers don't provide one.

They have other, more personal things with which to deal. Since the two men won't and can't talk about the secret business at hand, Greville and Oleg spend much of their time bonding over drinks, meals, nights at the theater, family, and their shared belief that global political conflicts shouldn't get in the way of the potential bonds and friendship between individual people. Through all of this, the film offers up a nice, understated sense of idealism—that theoretical enemies can become easy friends, that doing the right thing is as simple as being willing to do it, that there are higher goods.

There are challenges, of course. Both men have to hide their activities from their families, leading to some problems at home between Greville and his wife, who's written and played by Jessie Buckley with more respect and intelligence than we might expect from the role of the wife left behind. The British and American intelligence apparatuses make empty guarantees to get what they want, and Oleg starts to be suspected by the KGB.

The tension here builds well enough, thanks to these plot mechanisms, and Cumberbatch's performance, as a man in over his head gradually learning of what moral stuff he is made, serves as a fine mirror to the film's idealistic assets. The Courier, obviously, moves inexorably toward the grim reality of this story. Even in those darker moments, there's some consolation in one scene, when one man gets pass some information of his own: The other did the right thing.

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