I have a certain genre of mine that I like to refer to as “movies for afternoons where you’re the youngest there by far”. I have enjoyed many such movies, for instance The Lady in the Van was such a movie, aswell as Philomena for instance. I have also despised many such movies, for instance the abhorrently terrible Darkest Hour was such a film, aswell as Victoria and Abdul (“I get to pick the movie, you always get to pick the movie” – She hated both too). This genre title is not to dismiss these films, it is rather to make them be ingratiated into their own little private club where I feel they work best. These are the sorts of mild-mannered, usually historic true life films that welcome often an older crowd to the cinema. The Courier is such a movie and fortunately does fall in line with the better films of this little genre of mine. “Wow-a-wow, little genre of mine” I’ll stop.
The Courier comes to us from its true life origins written by Tom O’Connor and directed by Dominic Cooke, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of real life businessman turned spy Greville Wynne. O’Connor’s script is a taut little piece that spans a great deal of time without ever once lacking pace, precision and a pivotal focus on human emotion and drama, as a matter of fact the script’s focus on the human drama underneath all the espionage is the films biggest strength and leads to its incredibly powerful conclusion. It’s very much in the vein of the recent spate of ‘footnote biopics’, coined after Tom Hanks commented on Bridge of Spies by stating that he simply read a footnote in a historical novel and felt it could be an entire feature. In that case he was wrong (I personally didn’t much care for it), in this case however Cooke and O’Connor deliver in the promise of this Hanksian premise and give us a delightful and devastating little tragedy. Cooke, a remarkably talented theatre director has now shown his craft in film a couple of times, with this furthering his ability in smaller household dramas, whilst also of course also featuring many excellently conceived sequences of genuinely thrilling espionage.
The cast is sublime at every turn, with Jessie Buckley, Angus Wright and Rachel Brosnahan all delivering excellent supporting performances circling the lives of the two key figures in Cumberbatch and our Russian mole Oleg (played incredibly well by Merab Ninidze). Buckley balances the typical foibles of such a wife character in these films with the sort of depth and talent that she has brought to everything for some time, O’Connor’s script too doesn’t push her to the side as so many features of this ilk do. Wright is a devilishly British workman dealing with logistics and business, when in actuality he’s dealing with people’s lives. The dynamics of such a character lead to some wonderful scenes shared with Brosnahan, as a similarly workman like figure, however foiled by her own genuine emotional attachment to the people and case at hand. Despite us all of course knowing the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis, we still find ourselves rooting and biting our nails for an outcome we know thankfully will occur. However as the film resolves this outcome, we delve into a very dark and wonderfully effecting finale in a Gulag, where Cumberbatch and Ninidze deliver one of the most powerful scenes I’ve seen all year. Goosebumps all around, or at least in seat G6.
A very well crafted taut 8/10 spy drama, with a surprisingly heavy emotional blow of a third act, that even brought a tear to one’s eye. Cumberbatch and Ninidze are both absolutely excellent and deserve all the praise that they have justly been receiving, however every other performance in this small stacked cast also serve a sturdy and intriguing script, punctuated by some sterling direction from Cooke leading for this to be hopefully a bit of a surprise commercial and critical hit. At least it was in this camp.
P.S. Dominic Cooke directed the greatest production of a musical that I have ever seen in his National Theatre production of Follies, perhaps a sample of bias as it’s also one of my favourite musicals of all time. This film now gives me a touch of faith that he isn’t going into his film adaptation of Follies in the coming years with a filmic blind-spot. This isn’t an epic, but it certainly is well-directed and gives one hope that such a film will not be a disaster, even if the musical itself is inherently built for the stage and not the screen. Alas, I can hope and hope I shall.
- -Thomas Carruthers
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