The Courier (2020) is an English movie directed by Dominic Cooke. The film takes place during the height of the Cold War.
It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, a middle-class mid-level British business man. Oleg Penkovsky, portrayed by Mereb Ninindze, is a high-ranking Soviet official who knows that there's a real chance of nuclear war.
British intelligence recruits Wynne to make a connection with Penkovsky. His job will be to bring back important information that will help the western powers. Rachel Brosnahan portrays a U. S. CIA agent who is working with British intelligence.
The film succeeds or fails on the work of Cumberbatch. He's a superb actor, and the movie falls into place on the basis of his acting. (In fairness, he's such a competent actor that I had a little trouble accepting him as a less-than-competent businessman.) Ninindze does good work, but I had trouble accepting Brosnahan as a CIA agent. (Mrs. Maisel, yes. CIA, no.) For the record, I also had trouble with the basic assumption that the CIA agents were the good guys.
This movie provides an intense, claustrophobic experience. It's very well done, but at the other end of the spectrum from James Bond spy movies. We saw this film on the small screen, where it worked well. It has a barely adequate IMDb rating of 7.1. I thought that it was better than that, and rated it 8.
