The Courier

The Cold War and its spies ... Getting military secrets out of the Soviet Union ... Cuban missile crisis ... Khrushchev unhinged ... Let's Twist Again ... How MI6 and the CIA betrayed their informant ... Benedict Cumberbatch, as the ordinary Greville Wynne, comes to the "rescue" ... Miss Lumière at the flicks  

Cumberbatch as the inconspicuous businessman

Greville Wynne. An ordinary hero by any other name would smell somewhat fishy, which just goes to show how much stranger truth is than fiction.

This modest fact underpins the latest extraordinary real life espionage tale told in director Dominic Cooke's elegant thriller The Courier.

Written by Tom O'Connor and based on actual events that occurred amid the icy depths of the Cold War, this is a film for spy aficionados, as well as fans of the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch who is fast occupying the "actor's actor" pedestal vacated by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Cumberbatch plays an unremarkable, middlingly successful London salesman of manufacturing tools (Greville Wynne) caught up in the ruthless world of (un)realpolitik.

He drinks too much, he's paying for a past infidelity and he has a lovely line in self-deprecating humour (poor man's Colonel Blimp moustache included).

Wynne is perfect fodder for a bold plan hatched by MI6 and the CIA after they get word that one of the Soviet Union's top military intelligence officers, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, is willing to pass on details of Russia's nuclear plans to the West.

Disillusioned by President Khrushchev, who he describes as "impulsive and chaotic, a man like that shouldn't have nuclear codes" (Trump, anyone?), Penkovsky wants the West to use the information he provides "as a tool to bring peace".  

Good luck with that ... 

To lessen the risk of Penkovsky being pinged by the ever-present KGB, the Brits and the Americans decide to recruit an "ordinary businessman" who has legitimate reasons for travelling to and from Moscow.

What neither side reckons on (personal loyalty, friendship and courage) are at the heart of this gripping story of international politics, deception and ruthlessness.

It's a glamorous world on the surface, thanks largely to the gorgeous cinematography of Sean Bobbitt who gives us a Moscow in the early sixties (actually it was shot in Prague) bathed in soft greys and crushed blacks, full of shadows, and a London of bright West End lights and stuffy private clubs opaque with cigar smoke.

Indeed one of the great nostalgic pleasures of this film is the ubiquitous presence of cigarettes, often employed for dramatic effect.

The production design overall is superlative (it's the BBC after all) and a perfectly Eastern bloc score, courtesy of Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski, sweeps the whole classy drama along.

After initially being astounded he's in the company of actual spies ("Oh my! This is unexpected") Greville takes to his new role with relish, making seamless contact with Penkovsky, a beautifully calibrated performance by Georgian actor Merab Ninidze.

In a delicious piece of cultural comparison Oleg (call me Alex) takes Wynne to his first ballet; in London Wynne takes Oleg to a boozy local where they dance to Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again".

All goes smoothly in the couriering business until the stakes get ratcheted up, thanks to the developing Cuban missile crisis, and Oleg comes under suspicion by Russian security.

It's no surprise (except to decent old Greville Wynne) when the British and American spooks decide to abandon their arrangement and Penkovsky along with it.

But Wynne insists on going "back in" to facilitate Penkovsky and his young family's escape via Finland.

Thereafter the plot thickens to a tense mess before resolving - and that includes the world nuclear threat.  

Exactly what happens would be telling, but the film's denouement involves imprisonment, torture, buckets of excrement and a final, poignant meeting between Oleg and Greville.

As Oleg says to his friend:

"We are only two people, but this is how things change." 

If only.

The Courier is screening at selected cinemas now.