The Courier Review

The Courier is a Cold War spy thriller about how a British businessman became an asset for Western intelligence in the early ‘60s.

Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) is a GRU officer who sends a message to the CIA and MI6 that he fears that nuclear war is imminent. The CIA and MI6 have to find a way to bring Penkovsky to the West without raising suspicion. They recruit Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a British businessman who has had dealings in Eastern Europe. Wynne becomes a valuable asset to Western intelligence by bringing information from Penkovsky.

People who like realistic spy stories will really enjoy The Courier. It has a setup that would have fitted in a John le Carré or Graham Greene novel or a Hitchcockian thriller because they all have had stories about ordinary people getting sucked up in the world of espionage.  In the case of Greville Wynne, it was true.

The Courier bears some similarities to films like Argo and Bridge of Spies. They were all films about real spy operations. The Courier and Bridge of Spies both focused on two people who were roped into espionage and focused on the same period. Both films even showed similar events like the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Due to Wynne being an outsider to espionage he had to be given a crash course in spying. Wynne was warned that anyone could be a KGB agent or an informant. It added to the sense of danger for Wynne since he was operating in a real-life Oceania. Wynne had to communicate with symbols like a tie clip and walk around Moscow at night.

Whilst The Courier was not a film filled with gadgets and action, there was a lot of tension during the defection sequence. The film established the high stakes, and everyone was on edge. It was similar to the sequence at the end of Argo where the Americans were trying to escape Iran.

The Courier was strong with its espionage activities but what really lifted the film was the characters. Wynne and Penkovsky developed a friendship. Penkovsky liked him when they met and he didn’t trust anyone else to meet him in Moscow. Wynne was the one who advocated for the CIA and MI6 to help Penkovsky defect when the danger was so great. Wynne’s mission also had a personal toll on him because he was stressed and paranoid. This was shown when he went out on a family camping trip and he lashed out at his son (Keir Hills).

Rachel Brosnahan played Emily Donovan, a CIA officer who runs the operation with MI6. Her character was like Clive Owen’s role in the 2012 film Shadow Dancer. Both play intelligence officers who rope in ordinary people into their spying operations but as their stories progress they have to walk the tightrope between national security and protecting their assets. Emily started off as a manipulative character, she said to her superiors that all she needed to do was to let the British think they were in control and used the threat of nuclear war to make Wynne return to Moscow. She changes when the climate in Moscow gets more hostile. Emily stood in contrast to her British counterpart, Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) who was pragmatic and more reserved: so, a typical British civil servant. However, I kept thinking that’s Angus from the final season of Peep Show when I saw him.

The Courier does try to tap into some contemporary issues. Penkovsky stated he was giving information to the West because he didn’t trust Khrushchev with nuclear weapons because he was irrational and impulsive. Sounds very similar to a recent American president. The film also showed the Russians poisoning a character which led to thoughts about things not much had changed in the past 60 years.

The Courier was a well-executed historical spy story. It had the double benefit of having an excellent spy story and showing the personal sides of its characters.