The courier film tells the story of Oleg Penkovski and Greville Wynne’s cooperation for the benefit of the West.
The character of Emily Donovan (right) is based on a real person, though not a CIA spy. Yle
Based on true events Courier-in the spy movie, we live in the middle of the Cold War. It’s 1960, and the nuclear arsenal is at its peak.
The USA and the Soviet Union have enough weapons to destroy all of humanity. Many fear that this will happen. One of them is military intelligence general Oleg Penkovski (1919–1963), alias Ironbark. That is why he is ready to pass on secret information to the West.
Oleg approaches the CIA, which in turn takes MI6 as a partner. In order to keep a low profile, Oleg is met by an ordinary British businessman. Greville Wynne (1919–1990) is not a spy, but he trades with Eastern European countries. At the urging of the intelligence services, he adds the Soviet Union to his list. That’s how he meets Oleg, and the collaboration – and friendship – begins.
Greville Wynne didn’t really spit in the glass. Later in life, he also suffered from depression. ANL/Shutterstock, All Over Press
In total, the men smuggle more than 5,000 top-secret military documents from the Soviet Union. Penkovski is considered one of the most valuable spies in the West, but his end is coming fast. The men are arrested by the KGB during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oleg is quickly executed and buried anonymously. Greville receives a prison sentence, but is exchanged for a Soviet spy, and so Greville gets back to Britain. There, the rest of his life turned out to be less glamorous.
Merab Ninidze plays Oleg and Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville. Yle
Dominic Cooken the directorial completed in 2020 stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Merab Ninidze. The CIA agent and Greville’s director is played by Emily Donovan Rachel Brosnahan. However, Emily didn’t really exist. All of Greville’s directors were actually men, as the Evening Strandard reports. However, according to Cooke, Emily’s character is based on a real woman. British spy Janet Chisholm was married to a diplomat and lived in Moscow. He helped Greville and Oleg, but is not seen in the film. According to Cooke, Janet would get her own movie, even though Janet herself refused to speak publicly about her role in the operation until her death in 2004.
Courier today at Teema & Femi at 21:02 & Arena. See all TV programs and broadcast times in Telku’s TV guide.
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The Courier is a brilliant movie and one of those under-rated fact based espionage classics that deserve so much more adulation. Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant, indeed brilliant beyond belief once you compare pictures of him in the film with Greville Wynne in real life. Also meriting praise is Merab Ninidze who plays the Russian spy Oleg Penkovsky who fed Wynne data on the Russian missile build-up in Cuba. In real life these heroes helped JFK prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis getting out of hand.
If you liked Bill Fairclough’s epic spy novel Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series you are going to love The Courier and vice versa. Why mention that you may ask? It too is an under-rated fact based espionage thriller and coincidentally Bill Fairclough’s father, ex British military intelligence, was a close adviser to SuperMac, the British Prime Minister credited with advising JFK during the Cuban missile crisis.
Just like Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor about KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, both the Courier and Beyond Enkription are “must reads or must views” for all those who claim to be espionage cognoscenti. For more about the secrets of spies like the Faircloughs, Philby, John le Carré and Pemberton’s People in MI6 see the news article dated 3 May 2024 in TheBurlingtonFiles website.