Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Courier Blu-ray Movie Review

Wynne. Greville Wynne.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 3, 2021

There's that old well worn maxim that there is no honor among thieves, but can there be friendship among spies, or at least between a spy and a supposed "businessman"? The Courier deals with a rather interesting sidebar to the Cold War, documenting the real life story of an English businessman named Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, finally playing someone with a name as unusual as his). Wynne was recruited by MI6 (with perhaps a little help from the CIA) to help pass secrets from the Soviet Union to the West under the guise of Wynne establishing business ties in Moscow. Wynne's relationship with a Soviet colonel named Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), who worked in "military intelligence", was part of that subterfuge, since Wynne and Penkovsky pretended it was all about business, when in fact Penkovsky was doing his best to keep the West apprised of the Soviet Union's nuclear ambitions, in an attempt to stave off a World War III holocaust. Wynne's story has been told before, notably in a mid-eighties BBC miniseries appropriately originally called Wynne and Petrovsky, but which was evidently later broadcast under the title of one of Wynne's own memoirs, The Man from Moscow. The Courier gives the story a kind of high gloss treatment, but it's still surprisingly visceral and gives Cumberbatch another opportunity to create a rather memorable characterization.

Despite the obvious tensions that still exist between modern day Russia and the West, principally the United States, they arguably pale in comparison to the environment of the post-World War II era. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then Harry S. Truman had perhaps made a "deal with the devil" in the form of Joseph Stalin in order to help defeat Hitler, but any hopes for a collaborative spirit in the wake of that triumph evaporated pretty quickly, and even after Stalin's death things remained pretty icy, as is documented early in The Courier with a famously fiery speech by Nikita Khrushchev (Vladimir Chuprikov), where he promises to "bury" the United States. Among the almost robotically approving acolytes in Khrushchev's audience is Penkovsky, though another vignette clearly demonstrates that Penkovsky is not a true blue (red?) believer, taking an almost insane chance at contact the Americans through two random tourists Penkovsky overhears on a Moscow street (some background research I conducted seems to suggest that as outlandish as this may seem, something close to it actually happened).

Another tidbit that I'm assuming may have been "fictionalized" is the involvement of a female CIA officer named Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan), who meets up with an MI6 counterpart named Dickie Franks (Angus Wright), who in turn knows Wynne and thinks he'd be the perfect undercover "businessman" to partner with Penkovsky. Now, the same research that turned up the unlikely fact that Penkovsky initially approached two random strangers to get information to the Americans also suggests that Penkovsky made regular trips to the United Kingdom, facilitating a relationship, while The Courier tends to emphasize the "opposite" itinerary of Wynne traveling to the Soviet Union, something that of course places an untrained, and (according to Dickie) out of shape businessman in peril.

The central part of The Courier is in many ways the most interesting, even if an assumed "spy thriller" ambience is never totally affirmed. Instead, the film concentrates on the unlikely friendship between Penkovsky and Wynne, making a perhaps overly optimistic point that human to human contact can prevent things like, you know, Mankind being wiped out by nuclear weapons. The film contextualizes this within the decidedly more pessimistic development that Penkovsky and Wynne end up both being arrested by the Soviets. If Wynne at least made it out alive, the film suggests he was deeply damaged as a result (while some accounts certainly overtly mention that Wynne suffered due to his imprisonment, a brief archival interview with him from right after his release which is shown during the closing credits show a seemingly resilient, cheery man, but that may be just a bit of British "stiff upper lip"-ism at play).

If the whole imprisonment angle is probably melodramatized in a patent ploy to get Cumberbatch another Academy Award nomination, a lot of the depictions offered are less showy and perhaps more powerful as a result. Some structural and/or writing issues remain, including what seems to be a blatant attempt to shoehorn some kind of female presence into the film.

The Courier Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Courier is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists Arri Alexas and a 4K DI as relevant data points, and the result is an often beautifully burnished but still well detailed looking presentation. There are various grading techniques employed, as can be made out in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, and some actual desaturation, as in the opening vignette involving Khrushchev, but on the whole detail levels remain secure and fine detail is often very impressive. Any number of interior scenes are frequently bathed in yellow light, and while there's perhaps a hint of what I've termed "Alexa murk", it's really pretty minimal, and I was repeatedly struck with the amount of detail that is able to peek through in even rather dim sequences.

The Courier Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Courier offers a nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that may not have a glut of "wow" sonics, but which consistently engages the side and rear channels with artfully placed ambient environmental effects and Abel Korzeniowski's score. Even relatively tamped down dialogue scenes, as in some of the early material with Wynne and his MI6 and CIA contacts offer nice background spill in environments like dining rooms. A couple of shocking moments, as with the execution of a supposed spy that Penkovsky has to witness, offer bursts of low end energy that may provoke a startle response. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Courier Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• On the Brink: Making The Courier (HD; 29:03) is an above average featurette which has a number of interesting interviews, including with Benedict Cumberbatch (who also co-produced).

The Courier Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

At almost the exact moment when Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne were careening down a calamitous path toward arrest, my own family had its own "Soviet spy scandal" to deal with when a late uncle of mine, an Air Force captain, was being court martialed and eventually convicted of having provided information to the Soviet Union via an intermediary in East Germany. This unfortunately was right when my father (my uncle's older brother) had been nominated for a promotion to Major General in the United States Army, so suffice it to say there was quite a bit of drama, with front page news stories published across the nation and none other than Walter Winchell calling it the biggest spy story since Alger Hiss (it turned out to be considerably more mundane in the long run, though my uncle did do time at Leavenworth before his conviction was overturned). That "family history" made parts of this film arguably more visceral for me than they may be for others, but one way or the other The Courier is a fascinating peek into a largely unknown nook and/or cranny of history. Technical merits are solid, and The Courier comes Recommended.