Yes, I know he’s taller, but I’m better looking!
The Courier (2020) falls into a class of movies in which some obscure but important person finally gets their time in the sun. In this case, it’s British businessman Greville Wynne, a facilitator of business deals, an everyday husband and father, who becomes, in 1960, a reluctant courier for Britain’s MI6 to and from Oleg Penkovsky, a KGB Colonel disenchanted with the USSR.
They perform the usual: information transfers, the ticklish ‘trap dance’ that goes with all such transactions, the methods to evade detection, and their eventual failure.
The charm of a story like this is not in the suspense, because the audience knows what’s coming: it is, after all, a tale derived from reality. In that respect, there will be no surprise at the plot at the highest levels, although minor twists and turns may still titillate the curiosity.
The strengths and weakness of a story like this lies, more heavily than most, on characterization and sensitivity to the costs of the protagonists’ actions. Wynne has been asked to risk liberty, life, and even family to act as a courier, and then to attempt to rescue Penkovsky. How does he react? Is he foolhardy, or living up to the standards of Western Civ? What would be the consequences of not trying?
The Courier’s storytellers do a fairly good job of it, making the audience care for the characters, but for those audience members who’ve seen a number of this sort of movie, the ranks of which include The Imitation Game (2014), there remains a faint ambiance, a commonality with other members of the category which is slightly unpleasant.
Still, that’s not to discourage readers from watching The Courier. If nothing else, it’s an interesting, if chilling, glimpse into autocratic Russia, a look at what it’s like to live in a society in which there were spies under every rock, spies who got ahead by finding things.
A reminder that autocracy’s offerings are accompanied by a price that is far too high.
