This espionage drama made little impact on its release because, at that time, we were just emerging from a global pandemic and cinemas were struggling to attract customers. Russia had not yet invaded Georgia and threatened to use nuclear weapons. But it is a film that is worth seeing because it is based on a true story in a period when humankind was facing an even more existential threat than Covid-19 and it is a reminder than you can never trust the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the height of the Cold War in 1960, a high ranking Soviet official called Oleg Penkovsky (ably portrayed by Georgian actor Merab Ninidze) is so concerned at Khrushchev’s threats to “bury” the West that he reaches out to the CIA with information that he hopes might de-escalate the situation. The CIA works with MI6 to find a safe way to bring our the information and they settle on an ordinary British businessman called Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch who never fails to give a convincing performance). Matters come to a head when Penkovsky provides material of assistance to the Americans in the Cuban missile crisis and when the Soviets realise that they have a traitor in their midst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike so many films these days, “The Courier” follows a straight and simple narrative with no flash-backs and no twists. As such, it is a workmanlike production which relies on the true story itself to highlight the need for, and the dangers of, spycraft. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This espionage drama made little impact on its release because, at that time, we were just emerging from a global pandemic and cinemas were struggling to attract customers. Russia had not yet invaded Georgia and threatened to use nuclear weapons. But it is a film that is worth seeing because it is based on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29057,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29056\/revisions\/29057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}