Post by sgev1977 on Dec 26, 2021 12:25:04 GMT
The Courier: the best Cold War thriller I’ve seen
This is a damn good, explosively tense story that focuses on the friendship that develops between two men on opposite sides. And it is plainly wonderful.
Written by Tom O’Connor (not the comedian; don’t be silly), and directed by Dominic Cooke (On Chesil Beach and an associate of the National Theatre), the film is, remarkably, based on true events. It’s set in the early 1960s when the CIA and MI6 had been clandestinely contacted by a member of Russian military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky — here played superbly by the Georgian actor Merab Ninidze. Alarmed by escalating tensions between the USSR and the West, he had offered secret information about his country’s nuclear capabilities and now someone is needed to smuggle this top-level intel out of Moscow who would not be suspected by the KGB.
Enter Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, also superb), an unassuming British salesman who sold engineering products and could travel under the guise of trade. Wynne is just the man for the job, you wouldn’t think, and he doesn’t think so either. Full review here.
This is a damn good, explosively tense story that focuses on the friendship that develops between two men on opposite sides. And it is plainly wonderful.
Written by Tom O’Connor (not the comedian; don’t be silly), and directed by Dominic Cooke (On Chesil Beach and an associate of the National Theatre), the film is, remarkably, based on true events. It’s set in the early 1960s when the CIA and MI6 had been clandestinely contacted by a member of Russian military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky — here played superbly by the Georgian actor Merab Ninidze. Alarmed by escalating tensions between the USSR and the West, he had offered secret information about his country’s nuclear capabilities and now someone is needed to smuggle this top-level intel out of Moscow who would not be suspected by the KGB.
Enter Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, also superb), an unassuming British salesman who sold engineering products and could travel under the guise of trade. Wynne is just the man for the job, you wouldn’t think, and he doesn’t think so either. Full review here.
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spectator-s-best-films-of-2021