Movie Review: 'The Courier'

Every year we get further from World War 2. and the Cold War that followed it, new stories of bravery emerge and are more amazing than the last. The latest in this line of long unsung heroes is a man named Greville Wynne. In the early 1960’s, Greville Wynne was your average, British suburban dad. He was a salesman with a good patter and just enough charisma to make a good living.

And then, something dramatic happened and Greville Wynne went from anonymous English businessman to international prisoner and subject of intrigue. As tensions reached the ultimate boiling point between the United States and Russia and nuclear war between the superpowers appeared imminent, Greville Wynne was at the center of the intrigue and only a handful of people knew that.

That's the story that is told in the new thriller, The Courier. Before he became embroiled in international intrigue, Greville Wynne’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) life was a series of golf games, dinners and a minor drinking problem. He had a loving wife at home, Sheila (Jesse Buckley), a son, and the kind of tidy home one expects of your average middle class family. All of that changed when someone that Greville thought was just a fellow businessman turned out to be a member of MI6, the famed British spy agency, and he’d identified Greville as someone who could be of use.

A joint effort of American and English spy craft had determined that a high ranking member of the Russian intelligence community might be willing to flip sides. In order to get a message to this man, they needed a good cover story. The plan they hatched was to bring in a very average English salesman eager to break into an international market. Russia would view someone like Greville as little more than a greedy capitalist that they could manipulate for their own benefit in the international business world.

Greville was a perfectly non threatening, nondescript Englishman who could easily go unnoticed in a crowded market of English businessmen working to open the Eastern European market. As for Greville himself, he’s not exactly eager to play spy but when the mission only calls for him to wear a tie clip that signals the Russian that the Americans are in for working with him, he agrees. The high ranking Russian is Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidzi) and he takes a liking to Greville and his innocent meander into spy craft.

That might have been Greville’s only foray into Russia if not for how well he and Oleg get on. Eventually, as tensions rise between America and Russia, Oleg’s intelligence gathering becomes the linchpin in keeping the two superpowers from destroying each other and Greville becomes his best connection to the world outside the Kremlin. The intelligence transported covertly by Greville Wynne eventually becomes the most important intelligence in the world.

The Courier was directed by veteran theatre director Dominic Cooke and he proves to be an elegant, if unlikely choice for such a movie. Cooke’s approach to The Courier is character and relationship first and spy craft and intrigue second. By investing us in Greville and Oleg as people, friends and family men, we are drawn deeper into the spy narrative. We have skin in the game as it were, because we care about these characters.

More often in movies, directors fall in love with the spy stuff and the action and suspense. It’s nice to have such a diversion as we get in The Courier. It’s not that The Courier is lacking in suspense but rather that we are so involved in these characters that the suspense gains dimension. One of the keys of the movie is a character you would not expect, Jesse Buckley’s put upon wife, Sheila. Buckley is so good at delivering the domestic strife afflicting Greville that it adds another emotional dimension to the character.

There is a life to Greville Wynne beyond his historical significance and that makes him a more interesting and well rounded character. By extension, the way in which he relates to Penkovsky and Penkovsky’s desire to free his family gives dimension to a character who, again, in other movies, would be a subject of a series of action scenes, chases, spy craft and intrigue. That’s still there, to a point, but it matters more because we care about the man and the situation.

The Courier doesn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to Cold War era thrillers but it is a terrific true story that is well told and very well acted. The stars and the direction of The Courier are stellar. Everyone has an important role to play and they play them incredibly well. I briefly mentioned Jessie Buckley and in another movie her role would be thankless. Here, she's given purpose and necessity and Greville's family is important to the story.

Benedict Cumberbatch has reached that point in his career where he is so consistently good that he's easy to take for granted. His Greville Wynne is not a flashy performance or a meaty role that allows for a lot of pinache. Rather, it's dowdy role that gets its importance from the plot and not the character. Cumberbatch has to serve the story first and bring the character out in small revealing doses and he does that superbly throughout The Courier.

If I have one complaint regarding The Courier, it's the casting of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel star, Rachel Brosnahan, as the American spy handler of Cumberbatch's courier. Brosnahan has too much talent and too much charisma for a role this small and functional. Unlike Cumberbatch who has time to snuggle into his role, Brosnahan has little time and the role never feels large enough or broad enough for Brosnahan to get her teeth into it. This role called for a character actor who can blend in with the movie, Brosnahan is more of a star and too much of a star for this role.

That's minor complaint however, as it doesn't harm the movie to have someone as talented as Brosnahan, it merely exposes the thinness of the character written for her. The Courier opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 19th. No word on when it will make the move from the big screen to streaming services.