Direction: Dominic Cooke
Country: UK
I firmly believe that the life of British engineer and businessman Greville Wynne was far more interesting than this political thriller that tells his story. The Courier is a weak account of his involvement with the MI-6 and the warm relationship forged with the Soviet agent Oleg Penkovsky during the Cold War. Both played an important role in the prevention of a nuclear war as well as defusing the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
The film, written by Tom O’Connor and directed by Dominic Cooke, stars Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) as the British courier and Merab Ninidze (My Happy Family) as the Soviet informer. The atmosphere within the family is also addressed here as Wynne’s wife, Sheila (Jessie Buckley), becomes suspicious about her husband having a lover due to the numerous times he's absent in Moscow.
Although boasting a hyper-focused camera work that is pretty effective (the cinematographer is Sean Bobbitt, whose observant lens has been crucial in the works of director Steve McQueen), the film struggles to maintain minimally acceptable dynamics. The cold tone adopted by Cooke makes it stagger toward a half-baked climax, leading to the lamentable conclusion that he’s more interested in informing the audience than really entertaining it.
Honestly, the whole film feels like there’s something off, and because Cooke didn’t invest in thrills and Cumberbatch was not so convincing, the result is a vacuous, low-energy spy thriller that made me exhaustively insensitive.
