The 1962 missile crisis, triggered by the Soviet Union’s installation of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, has already spawned a few bookshelves and a few dozen movies for the big and small screens. It should be noted that despite the amount of written information available, many aspects of the crisis have remained secret to this day. This is also the case with the events and characters of the film ‘The Courier‘, released in 2020, directed by Dominic Cooke. We will not know soon, and may never know, whether Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was really the highest-ranking official in the Soviet hierarchy who agreed to pass information to the United States during the Cold War, and not a possible double agent who faked defection to transmit false information. Nor will we know whether the British businessman Greville Wynne, Penkovsky’s liaison with Western agencies, was really just a courier, or had already been enlisted in the British intelligence services for many years. The film script, signed by Tom O’Connor, starts from the known facts and adopts a plausible hypothesis, but not the only possible one.
When Penkovsky offers his services to American intelligence, the CIA asks the help of the British MI-6 service to find a courier who will not arouse the suspicions of Soviet counterintelligence. Wynne is chosen somewhat at random and agrees to play this dangerous role because it is suggested that his actions may save the world from nuclear catastrophe. He’s a very implausible spy – a bit drunk, a bit unfaithful in marriage – and that’s exactly why the scheme works well for a while. A friendship grows between Wynne and Penkovsky, also a little plausible in the years of the Cold War. We also know their families and we know that they will suffer terribly if they are caught. When this happens, the two disappear into the cellars of the KGB. Penkovsky’s fate is sealed, and Wynne can only get away easier if he convinces his torturous interrogators that he had no idea about the nature of the information he was smuggling out of the Soviet Union. And yet, the sacrifice made by the two will not have been in vain. Using the information transmitted by Penkovsky, the Americans manage to prevent aggressive actions by the Russians and finally obtain the withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba.
Although Dominic Cooke is a director with little experience in feature films, ‘The Courier‘ is professionally made, the narrative is cursive and the atmosphere is very well rendered, both in the sequences depicting the Soviet Union and those taking place in England. If we were not informed, we could think that it is a film made in that period. Benedict Cumberbatch is terrific as always. The actor melts into the character, becomes the character. Along with Merab Ninidze, they form a couple of people who meet, get to know each other, become friends and risk everything for a cause that is more important even than their lives. The thriller part, also well done, only takes up about a quarter of the film’s duration, and fans of the genre may be a little disappointed. The other viewers will be left with a human story about two people who, during the conflict, tried to change something, and probably succeeded, but at a huge personal cost. ‘The Courier‘ had the misfortune of being launched in the year of the pandemic and because of this it did not enjoy the public success it deserved. I hope it recovers in time and takes its rightful place among the good films of 2020.