Something for Your Weekend | Recommended Spy Film to Watch
THE COURIER (2020)
Director: Dominic Cooke Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley Runtime: 1 hour 51 minutes Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV (rent/buy)
In 1960, a Soviet military intelligence officer decided that his own government was heading towards a nuclear war and chose to do something about it. He could not walk into a Western embassy without being arrested. So MI6 and the CIA found him a courier: Greville Wynne, an ordinary British salesman with a legitimate reason to travel behind the Iron Curtain.
What follows is one of the most important spy stories of the twentieth century, and it actually happened. Wynne carried classified Soviet missile intelligence back to the West across multiple trips to Moscow, disguised as routine business visits. That intelligence helped shape the American response during the Cuban Missile Crisis and may well have prevented a nuclear war.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wynne without glamour. He is frightened before his first trip, and he is frightened during his last. Merab Ninidze as the Soviet officer is quietly excellent. The two men build a friendship, knowing full well it could get them both killed.
The film does not try to be a thriller. It stays close to two people doing something terrifying for reasons they believe in, and it lets the tension come from that.
Watch it with the lights low. It earns a quiet evening.
Something for Your Weekend returns every weekend with one recommended title — fiction, non-fiction, documentary, or series — for readers who take intelligence seriously.
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