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– Benedict Cumberbatch stars as an English salesman who was recruited by British and American intelligence to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War in The Courier, based on the true story of one Greville Wynne. Friday, the movie – which aired under the title at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 Ironbark—Rated 80% by critics on Rotten Tomatoes. This is what they say:
- The Courier gives Cumberbatch another meaty role, and the actor fits in all too easily, “delivers a” meticulous performance, “writes Gary M. Kramer at Salon. He wished there was more focus on Oleg Penkovsky, the Soviet agent who uses Wynne to travel intelligence to the West, played by a ‘solid’ Merab Ninidze. While Kramer has criticized the film’s “hushed” nature, “the bromance that develops between Greville and Penkovsky is captivating.”
- “The Cuban missile crisis looms in the background, but we hardly feel its threat,” as director Dominic Cooke “either cannot create tension or chooses not to,” Jeannette Catsoulis writes to the New York TimesSadly, the film “stubbornly resists involving or influencing us until it’s almost over,” she writes. “But by then you may have fallen asleep.”
- Mick LaSalle does not seem to have been asleep for a long time, however. “As the pressure on Wynne builds and the missions become more dangerous, the spectacle of this average man trying to stay safe becomes compelling,” he writes at the time. San Francisco Chronicle, applauding Cumberbatch’s “strong work”. He adds, “Tom O’Connor’s script hits the right notes, and Dominic Cooke’s direction brings out unspoken subtleties of the characters and their interactions.”
- Ann Hornaday argues that “the film’s modesty and carefully managed ambitions define its strength at a time when such films are scarcer every day”. It’s “a lot of fun in the first hour and a half, while Cumberbatch makes the most of his good-humored character” for a dark shift that “isn’t always as graceful as the previous one.” Still, it is a “good” film, Hornaday concludes during the Washington Post
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