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My Review - The Courier.
My Rating 9/10
Benedict Cumberbatch ,never ceases to impress me with the diversity of the roles he portrays . He's certainly among my top 5 British Actors only last week we saw him play an American Prosecutor in The Mauritanian as well as his other performances portraying characters like Frankenstein, Doctor Strange in Avengers Endgame as well as Patrick Melrose ,a drug addicted Adult child then Sherlock Holmes and of course his Academy Award nominated role as Alan Turing convince me that he's a great actor.
In " The Courier "he plays Cold War spy Greville Wynne who with his Russian source Oleg Penkovsky played superbly by Merab Ninidze try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
No spoilers from me except to say this film is based on true events that people of my generation lived through and it was chilling to know how close the world came to total destruction from nuclear war. I was 12 years old in 1962 when the story is set and can recall the general angst and worry that even infiltrated Australia in those days of our relative isolation.
This is Benedict Cumberbatch's third film concerning British intelligence, and the second of those films to be set during the Cold War. He previously appeared in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and The Imitation Game (2014).
His character at first seems so benign just an average successful businessman who happens to be exactly the type that MI6 and the CIA need to pose as a business partner of Oleg Penkovsky in order to gain intelligence relating to Soviet missiles being transported to Cuba.
As he progresses from courier to spy we see his strength of character develop and he becomes more useful to the Spy agencies.
It always amuses me in these espionage stories how the top brass and consular staff assign these people for spying at great risk to the individual while they stay relatively safe and low risk back at headquarters as occurs in The Spy film about Eli Cohen.
It was great to see Rachel Brosnahan give a great dramatic performance as Emily Donovan a top CIA recruiter I've only seen her her terrific role asThe Marvellous Mrs Maisel at first I thought she was the ghost of Patty Duke , such a similar look and voice.
The courier written skilfully by Tom O'Connor and beautifully directed by Dominic Cooke is a must see in my opinion.
I was impressed also by the very effective score by composer Abel Korzeniowski.
Perhaps it didn't qualify for this years awards season but it deserves to be.
score 9/10
tm-sheehan 1 April 2021
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6766781/ |
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7-4-2021 22:46:18