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Saturday, July 16, 2022

THE COURIER (2020)

This fine, gripping Cold War spy drama, centered around the Cuban Missile Crisis, got lost in the cracks of another kind of world crisis, early Covid-19 panic.  Solidly constructed, reasonably fact-based, it’s old-fashioned moviemaking in a good way.  Director Dominic Cooke, a theater guy with the occasional film credit, could have tightened the screws a bit (say, ten minutes tighter), but impressively catches a drab early ‘60s time & place in this British/Soviet/American roundelay on a Russian minister from Khrushchev’s inner circle offering to leak State nuclear secrets as counter to the Premier’s instability.  Fearful of using a known agent, M16 and C.I.A. find their patsy in pasty-faced middle-class businessman Benedict Cumberbatch (bringing his inner Tom Hanks into play, weaselly little mustache and all).   And how smoothly it all seems to go . . . till Soviet source Merab Ninidze is spotted and can only get out if Cumberbatch breaks norms to go back in.  The film is split nearly down the middle: first half all spy-craft; second all prison drama/loyalty test.  It proves a pacing & structural issue Cooke can’t quite navigate.  But not a fatal one since the story is consistently involving, the motives on all sides fascinating and the acting on such a high plain.  (Cooke misses suggesting the sheer amount of material successfully smuggled out to concentrate on family tensions stemming from strict secrecy.)  With Cumberbatch going all out in the starvation method acting department.  Like Tom Hanks in CASTAWAY/’00.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: See Hanks play the Cold War Spy Game in Steven Spielberg’s BRIDGE OF SPIES/’15.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/bridge-of-spies-2015.html

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