As someone who has studied the Cuban Missile Crisis in-depth, Dominic Cooper’s The Courier was the most masterful of history lessons in pure suspense and sublime acting that is off the charts. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as real-life businessman Greville Wynne, who is recruited by MI6 to go to the Soviet Union and meet with a Russian spy who is ready to turn over the plans for a missile deployment 90 miles from Florida.
As you remember from history, the United States and the USSR came closer to nuclear war at that moment than at any other moment in our collective history.
What is so fascinating about The Courier, as someone who has been obsessed with the confrontation between superpowers intensely, this was a part of this intriguing and utterly frightening tale that had escaped me. The British involvement was smart and cunning, by recruiting a businessman who does work in Eastern Europe, and especially the Soviet Union (Cumberbatch’s Wynne) to meet MI6’s Soviet counterpart. That is because as a non-spy, Wynn will not set off any red flags going to and from the USSR.
His participation in this mission was often harrowing and way above his pay grade as a businessman! We know how the Missile Crisis concluded, but how we got there is the brilliant crux of Cooke’s The Courier.
The Movie Mensch talked exclusively to director Cooke about the story, why it’s not so known, the magic that is Cumberbatch, and what it was about this story that made him commit his entire life to it until the flick was the perfect slice of cinema we see today.
Cooke’s film has a ton of heart, as Penkovsky and Wynne become friendly, even eating dinner with family. It’s touching and adds a layer of humanity that many Cuban Missile Crisis-centric films have missed.
The Courier is available On Demand starting April 16. Don’t miss it.
It also stars a superb Merab Ninidze as Oleg Penkovsky (Wynne’s Soviet counterpart), I’m Your Woman, and The Fabulous Mrs. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan as Wynne’s CIA contact Emily Donovan, Vladimir Chuprikov as Nikita Khrushchev, and the one and only Jessie Buckley as Sheila, Wynn’s wife.