In The Courier, a new film featuring Benedict Cumberbatch in a true story as a British civilian businessman conscripted into a spy game between the United States and the Soviets, it becomes far too easy to tune out the significant parts of the film that feel like retreads of better spy-fi flicks. This well-trod ground just proves too difficult to freshen up, but if we as an audience will continue to be subjected to the same paint-by- numbers explorations of the cold war time and again, at least some of the less repetitive entries will be saved by some solid performances.
It’s not that director Dominic Cooke fails to stage the human chess game between nations in a captivating way, or that writer Tom O’Connor can’t find the heart within the suspense of the piece. But there are so many films in this specific wheelhouse, of leveraging a handful of talented actors (often Brits) into a well worn story whose familiarity has long since begun to breed contempt. These films make for decent counterprogramming for smaller theaters to aim at the eldery and erudite who don’t want to see the latest superhero movie, but they’re rarely nourishing on their own merits.
The Courier is no different. It tracks the story of Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch), a charming and patriotic merchant brought into this tangled web of espionage by a CIA agent (Rachel Brosnahan) to help a high ranking Soviet officer, Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) defect in the lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Moving from the initial jitters of a non-combatant taking a crash course in trade craft to the operation itself, the film works best when it takes the time to invest in the sincere friendship that forms between Wynne and Penkovsky. Seeing the men bond and begin to understand one another proves its own little treat within the larger plot machinations, at first, anyway. Once the narrative circles back around to make their kinship an overly sentimental metaphor for bridging the gap between enemy nations, it feels too trite to truly marvel at.
But the main attraction is in those two lead performances, not to mention a lovely turn from Jessie Buckley as Wynne’s wife Sheila, who makes a real meal out of her smallish part as a woman who thinks her husband is just cheating on her, not sharing state secrets across enemy lines. The entire ensemble finds little pockets in which to deliver some strong moments and stirring emotions.
It just all gets lost in a format that feels perfunctory at best, dispensing with every narrative beat the viewer fully expects from the opening sequence. There’s nothing novel or idiosyncratic enough about the execution or structure to wrestle out of the gordian knot of repeating the glory of better films in this mold from recent memory, like Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
That said, it’ll probably do well for struggling theaters starved for new theatrical-first content to feed to cinema-starved moviegoers. How sad for this particular subgenre that regulations are shifting such that before long, exhibitors, and audiences for that matter, won’t be so likely to settle for less.
The post The Courier appeared first on Spectrum Culture.