BEFORE: Benedict Cumberbatch carries over from "The Mauritanian", for the last time, at least for now - I do have to point out that this is the 2020 film titled "The Courier", and not the 2019 film with the same title, which stars Gary Oldman, or the 2012 film, also with the same title, which stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan. There are at LEAST two other action movies with this same title out there...
I found Benny in another film on my list, but there's no time, with only two days until Father's Day and a week until I start my Summer Music Concert & Documentary Series, I can't squeeze in another Cumberbatch film - the best I can do is reschedule it. I can see how it could link to "Thor: Love & Thunder", which is a film I'd like to watch in August, only I'm not exactly sure if I can get there. My Rock & Doc Block is going to take me into August, and I've only programmed about 7 or 8 steps beyond that. If I have any time around the July 4 weekend then I can try to block out August and September, to try to link up with my October horror plans, and maybe close the gap, which would be exciting.
I keep finding more documentaries to add to the upcoming chain - the current total is 44 films, I think it started out as a circular chain of 35 or so, and then I found a way to drop in four docs about famous chefs like Julia Child and Wolfgang Puck without changing it around at all, then I found another doc about rock drummers that slid right in, another one about stand-up comedy that found a slot between two others, and I just saw that PBS is running that doc about Brian Wilson, that also found a place in the chain quite easily. Showtime's running a doc about George Martin's ill-fated recording studio in the Bahamas, that one simply has to be part of the mix too. Umm, you see the problem, right? But I'm going to try to hold fast and not make any more additions, because I don't know how many slots I'll need in August and September to get where I need to be on October 1. Theoretically I should be able to get FROM any film with a large cast TO any other film with a large cast, but there could be a limit.
THE PLOT: Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
AFTER: Incarceration and punishment has been a loose running theme for the week - starting with "The Bad Guys", where several animated villains got arrested for a heist and then had to pay their debt to society. Last night's film showcased one of the many Arabic people who were held in Guantanamo Bay for YEARS without being prosecuted or properly represented, and then there was "Stuart: A Life Backwards", in which a man recounted the many times he'd been to prison over the years. I suppose in "Dirty Pretty Things" the characters were always in danger of being arrested or deported, and while it didn't happen on-screen, you can assume that eventually somebody went to jail for organ trafficking there. Stretching things a bit more, in the "Doctor Strange" sequel, Scarlet Witch did some bad cosmic crimes across the Multiverse, but at least she ended up paying the price.
In the same vein, "The Courier" is a film based on a true story, about the regular businessman, recruited by U.S. and British intelligence, to travel to Moscow and come back with the evidence that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba, just a stone's throw from U.S. soil. This is the "Rogue One" story behind the Cuban missile crisis, if you will - once upon a time, it didn't matter HOW the U.S. found out about the missiles, but we've reached the point where every minor character in this saga gets their own stand-alone movie, which turns out to be easier and cheaper than doing a huge, epic, "Midway"-style movie about the event. If you focus on the small, you can sometimes cast some greater meaning on the large. Theoretically.
Wynne was chosen because he didn't fit the profile of a spy at all - not the traditional James Bond type, not in the least. He was chosen because he appeared to be a regular guy, he WAS a regular guy, and thus he'd be the last person that the Russians would suspect. And he did have business in Moscow, he represented some manufacturing firms that wanted to do business there - look, McDonald's restaurants don't just appear in Russia, that's a deal that takes time, and a few negotiations before you can get a Big Mac there. Yes, I know that McDonald's recently closed all their Russian locations, but they're still selling "Big Macs" at the new, rebranded restaurants, which are called Vkusno & Tochka, which means "Tasty and that's it." OK, so it's no "I'm loving it..." but then, the Russians probably are NOT loving it.
Wynne just had to bring back some documents with him from his business trips, and it was probably better that he did NOT know the contents of the envelopes - this way, he had plausible deniability, and he wouldn't have to lie about it, if he knew no details. His contact, Oleg Penkovsky, was eventually investigated by the KGB - as I saw last week in "Child 44", it was normal in the Soviet Union for the KGB to interview all citizens, and ask them to turn in suspected dissidents, and anyone who gave the KGB better leads got better treatment in the long run. People turning in others helped keep the heat off themselves, in other words. The KGB threatened Penkovsky's family to get him to confess his traitorous activities, but in Penkovsky's mind, he was saving the world, both sides, by telling the U.S. about the USSR's missiles in Cuba. Yeah, the KGB didn't really see it that way, and they made him reveal his contact working for MI6.
For some reason, Wynne returned to Moscow, to try to help Penkovsky defect, but instead he was caught by the KGB and thrown in Lubyanka prison, sentenced to eight years. Penkovsky got the firing squad, and Wynne was released by the Soviets in exchange for one of their spies. Both men claimed again and again that Wynne was just a courier, he had no knowledge of the content of the material he delivered, but that scarcely mattered. If the spy-exchange plot point sounds a bit like "Bridge of Spies", there is a connection - Wynne was traded for Russian spy Konon Molody, who operated as the assistant to Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, who was seen as a character in that other movie.
NITPICK POINT: Wynne spends four years in a Russian prison, and when he returns to the UK, his son looks exactly the same, like he didn't age. I may not know a lot about children, but I know that they never look the same as they did four years ago - a kid at age 12 would tend to look different than he did when he was 8, and that isn't reflected here.
I guess the moral of the story here is that if your country's agents contact you and ask you to be their courier, it's not necessarily going to be a thrilling spy-movie type adventure for you, you could spend 8 years or more in a Russian prison, so please factor that in when you make your decision.
Also starring Merab Ninidze (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Rachel Brosnahan (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Jessie Buckley (last seen in "Dolittle"), Angus Wright (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Zeljko Ivanek (last seen in "Dogville"), Kirill Pirogov, Anton Lesser (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Mariya Mironova, Vladimir Chuprikov, James Schofield, Fred Haig, Emma Penzina, Keir Hills, Peter Klimes, Alice Orr-Ewing, Oliver Johnstone, Eysteinn Sigurdarson, Jonathan Harden (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Olga Koch, Richard Glaves, Ondrej Maly (last seen in "Child 44"), Jonathan Addis, with archive footage of John F. Kennedy.
RATING: 6 out of 10 ballet dancers at the Bolshoi
There are so many epic espionage films and TV shows on now or in the pipeline including The Courier about Wynne and Penkovsky. Coming soon is Joe and Anthony Russo's The Gray Man. Already on TV or in cinemas are The Ipcress File with newcomer Joe Cole, Mick Herron’s Slow Horses from the Slough House stables, The Courier about Greville Wynne played by Benedict Cumberbatch who looks astonishingly just like Wynne did in real life, Colin Firth in Operation Mincemeat, Olen Steinhauer’s All the Old Knives and let’s not forget Kaley Cuoco in the Flight Attendant.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, ignoring the fact based Operation Mincemeat and The Courier, there’s almost too much fictional espionage on the menu to cope with so why not try reading instead. If you liked Deighton, Herron or Wynne, we suggest a noir fact based espionage masterpiece could do the trick. Two compelling thrillers spring to mind. They are both down to earth curious real life Cold War novels you’ll never put down.
Try Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series and Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor about KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky.
Talking of Col Oleg, he knew MI6’s Col Mac (aka Col Alan Pemberton in real life) who was Edward Burlington’s handler in The Burlington Files. Bill Fairclough (aka Edward Burlington) came across John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) long after the latter’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby. The novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians.