REVIEW: The Courier Can’t Quite Pull All the Pieces Together

Would you risk everything, including your life for your country? What about if someone close to you made the ask? Those are the questions asked in the new film, The Courier. Set in the 1960s, the film follows Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), an ordinary businessman recruited by the SMI6 and the CIA to act as a courier between the services and Soviet Union secret agent Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). The goal: prevent nuclear war.

Based on true events, Wynne and Penkovsky formed an actual friendship from their time passing secrets. The main challenge with this story is that director, Dominic Cooke, doesn’t truly focus on the remarkable friendship between Wynne and Penkovsky until the final half of the film. The audience never gets to watch these two grow as friends; instead, Cooke tries too hard to explain why they are smuggling secrets out of USSR. This, at points, became a little boring.

The audience never fully grasps who these two characters are and why. It seems quite sudden when they decide to trust one another. In all honesty, if you got rid of the first 40 minutes of the film, the film would have been really good. It was fast paced and those minutes kept you on your toes constantly wondering what was going to happen to these characters.

Cumberbatch does well navigating Wynne’s growth throughout the film, but you never truly end up caring for the character. Ninidze is great as Penkovsky, but like Cumberbatch’s Wynne, you never end up rooting for the character. Cumberbatch and Ninidze are strong alongside one another, but it isn’t until the end where you truly feel like these two characters are friends. This has nothing to do with eithers performance, but everything to do with the writing. Rachel Brosnahan’s Emily Donovan is underutilized in the film and it takes far too long for her to go from a secondary character to a major player in the game, which is a shame because she is so talented.

The Courier is a different kind of spy film, that won’t be for everyone. If the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and old fashioned spy stories intrigue you, this film may be for you. Again, the first 40 minutes of the film are slow and hard to pay attention to. If you’re looking for an edge-of-your-seat type spy film, skip to the last 50 minutes of the film or watch another movie.

Grade: C+