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‘courier x’: film review.

The real-life explosion of a commercial jet is at the center of 'Courier X,' a sprawling, globe-spanning conspiracy drama starring Udo Kier.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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Courier X might not be “the film the CIA tried to stop,” as its promotional materials claim, but the many-stranded conspiracy drama could’ve been a contender. Placing elements of the agency in a global web of underworld activity, first-time filmmaker Thomas Gulamerian posits that it engineered the 1996 explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800. He offers details both compelling and tedious, without shaping them into a blood-pumping thriller.

The best thing about the feature, which takes its theatrical bow two weeks before segueing to VOD via Gravitas Ventures, is the collection of finely weathered faces among its ensemble of character actors. Along with the strong use of New York locations, they give the film a dramatic weight. Writer-director Gulamerian squanders his raw material, though, in an overload of plot and exposition. More succinct writing and tighter editing could have yielded a solid B picture.

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Release date: Oct 21, 2016

Among the uneven performances,  Udo   Kier  is reliably watchable as a former  Stasi  officer with ties to the CIA as well as to diamond smuggling. In the title role, first-timer  Bron Boier has an ultra-flat affect that might make sense for a mercenary who sees himself as “nothing but the mailman,” but it never stops being distracting. He plays Trenlin Polenski , who travels the globe smuggling diamonds and other contraband in his body. Through his work for Kier’s Nathan Vogel, a “classified asset” of the CIA, he becomes the “neutral” called upon to help bring down Flight 800. The reasons for the agency’s elaborate payback plot to stage an “aviation interruption with no post-visibility” — i.e., to bomb a plane in a way that can’t be detected — are the least plausible aspect of the speculative story.

Gulamerian begins the film with actual news reports of the crash (speaking of distracting, an anchor other than Brian Williams might have been a better choice). From there he moves back in time to introduce various CIA players, including the director (Lee Shepherd) and several agents (James C. Burns, Chris Boas, Ron Gilbert), some of whom are men of conscience and integrity, some deeply compromised.

Included in the film’s male-centric network of high-stakes deceit and big money are a New York mob boss (Gary Francis Hope), his henchmen (John Bianco , Anthony Mangano ) and, inevitably, a former Contra (Ralph Guzzo ), who blackmails the CIA with sensitive info about its activities in Nicaragua. A more public challenge to the agency arrives in the form of reports by investigative journalist Gary Webb (Jay Disney) purporting its role in the country’s crack epidemic. Brief scenes of Webb have an extraneous, stilted quality. It’s too bad his subplot isn’t better integrated into the story; Gulamerian caps it with footage from the extraordinary town meeting in Los Angeles when the CIA director addressed charges of drug trafficking.

There’s plenty to chew on, and most of the story’s threads are grounded in reason. But some are certainly flat. The movie loses its initial sense of mystery and suspense as Gulamerian ploddingly lays out the pieces rather than creating sparks of intriguing connection. His eye for locations and action particulars bodes well for future efforts, though, if he can add a surer grasp of dramatic momentum to his arsenal.

Distributor: Gravitas Ventures Production: International Artists Agency Cast: Udo Kier , James C. Burns, Lee Shepherd, Gary Francis Hope, Bron Boier , Iva Stelmak , John Bianco , Ralph Guzzo , Anthony Mangano , Chris Boas, Ron Gilbert, Jay Disney, Richard Gleason, Ben Van Bergen, Andrzej Krukowski , Tom Morrissey Director-s creenwriter -producer : Thomas Gulamerian Executive producer: Brian David Directors of photography: Mark Conrad Alkiewicz , Jonathan Dale Bell Art director: Chris X. Carroll  Composer: John Avarese

Not rated, 134 minutes

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Review: Conspiracy drama ‘Courier-X’ proves tedious

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The poster for “Courier-X” sports a splashy banner reading “The Film the CIA Tried to Stop.” Apparently that’s because the film claims to dramatize the conspiracy theory that the U.S. military was somehow involved in the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. The CIA has absolutely nothing to worry about. There’s not a shred of drama here.

“Courier-X” is the only listed credit for writer-director-producer Thomas Gulamerian and star Bron Boier, and the inexperience is evident, despite the presence of established actors such as Udo Kier and James C. Burns. Boier plays a small-time gem smuggler contacted by the CIA, and the only character who gets something of a sketchy back story and personal life. That’s for naught, because his performance is wooden and devoid of charisma. The choppy editing and overly long scenes don’t help his case.

The film clocks in at a hefty 2 hours 14 minutes, filled mostly by growled dialogue between smugglers and mobsters and CIA agents. They walk and talk, sit and talk, call each other up on the phone and talk, all in the low-frequency tone of covert operations. There are far too many characters, including a small part for an actor playing journalist Gary Webb, who wrote about the link among the CIA, Central American drug dealers, the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and cocaine sales in the U.S. This should lend some conspiracy theory bona fides to the film, but it’s of no matter. “Courier-X” is so inscrutable and tediously boring that it will test the patience of even the most tenacious truther.

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‘Courier-X’

Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes

Playing: Laemmle NoHo 7, North Hollywood

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‘Courier-X’ is a Wannabe Conspiracy Thriller That Should Be Redacted

Part of having an intense belief in a massive conspiracy theory typically means piecing together loose threads of information and using your imagination to piece them all together. It doesn’t make sense to outsiders not privy to the various players and information, but that corkboard with yarn connecting all the dots only makes sense to the one constructing it. That’s the only explanation for the inept paranoid thriller Courier-X , the film from writer-director Thomas Gulamerian that aims to blow the lid off the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade and their role in the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. This low budget wannabe paranoid thriller spins its wheels for over two hours, featuring subplots that make no sense in service of a massive conspiracy that also makes no sense.

The most inventive aspect of Courier-X is the tagline employed in the marketing materials. “The film the CIA tried to stop,” the posters declared. It’s meant to make this completely bland and uninteresting movie somewhat controversial. It’s obvious that even the most shadowy forces of the CIA have bigger things to worry about than amateurish movies portraying the agency as irredeemably nefarious.

Courier-X revolves around a diamond smuggler, the CIA, ex-lovers, the mob, and leaders of underground forces in foreign lands. Trenlin Polenski ( Bron Boier ) travels the globe under various aliases. He has a drawer full of different passports and money which he uses to travel to different lands to pick up diamonds for Ivan ( Ben Van Bergen ) and Nathan Vogel ( Udo Kier ), the latter being a former agent in the East German Stassi. Meanwhile, agents at the CIA, including agents Walter Broadnax ( James C. Burns ) and Jack Mitchell ( Richard Gleason ) as well as Director James Hatch ( Lee Shepherd ) are trying to suppress an article by journalist Gary Webb ( Jay Disney ) that will document the CIA’s connection in the drug trade. For reasons that the film never makes entirely clear, the CIA goes through painstaking preparation to blow up TWA Flight 800 – something having to do with secretive mob boss Joseph Cossi ( Gary Francis Hope ) and his supposed connections to terrorism.

Trenlin begins taking out loans from Joseph Cossi after he learns that the elderly owner of his local pizza joint is being shook down by the mobster’s thugs. At which point, the smuggler begins entering into international business deals with the mob, including real estate developments in India. The mob eventually seeks retribution against Trenlin and kidnaps his ex-girlfriend Eva ( Iva Stelmak ), but that’s all resolved by the CIA when they need Trenlin’s services to secure some valuable documents. For two hours and fifteen minutes, Courier-X ping pongs between all of these disparate storylines hoping that some of that yarn on its corkboard of movie will make sense to the viewer. It never does cohere as everything seems to be obfuscated by the inept construction of its writer-director.

There’s no real visual style to Courier-X unless overwhelming incompetence counts as a visual style. This is a movie that has the look of a webseries. The film also has no intent in attempting to recreate the look of the mid-‘90s, with a lot of the technology more befitting of modern times than a time when dial-up was the main way to access the internet. The acting is wooden as is the wretched dialogue. Yet Courier-X is never bad enough to be entertaining in its incompetence, though there’s ample humor to be found in the cheap office buildings that are supposed to be the CIA Headquarters.

There’s no redeeming aspects to Courier-X . At the end of its ridiculously long convoluted plot, there’s nothing left to ask except “What in the hell was the point of that?” Say what you will about InfoWars , at least they have some production values behind their paranoid nonsense. The fatal flaw for Courier-X , aside from its inept writing, directing, and acting, is the fact that it just contains too many pointless threads that lead anywhere. You’d be better off watching Kill the Messenger if you want insight into the work of journalist Gary Webb – that film is merely okay but at least it has a beginning, middle, and end. Typically one can look a conspiracy theory and pick apart the leaps made to connect all the dots. With Courier-X the dots aren’t even connected so trying to pick apart its conspiracy is a fool’s errand. This is a movie that should’ve been heavily redacted before reaching the screen. Maybe the CIA tried to stop this movie as a public service.

• Overall Score

An astoundingly inept wannabe conspiracy thriller, Courier-X spins its wheels for well over two hours without ever once making a compelling movie or a coherent story.

About The Author

This here writing represents a symbol of Sean Mulvihill's individuality, and his belief in personal freedom. He's also a hack writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls.

Just watched the movie tonight. Great movie. The person reviewing this movie is naive. CIA has its hand in many cookie jars. Hoping the reviewer will get critical thinking skills before he writes again.

Sean, Crawl back into your bottle…

Spot-on review. I stumbled upon Courier X while looking up The Courier, featuring Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch, and watched it after seeing the latter. While Mr. Cumberbatch’s film was a stellar performance in a very compelling tale based on a true story, Courier X was an absolute antithesis with its horribly slow pace, patchwork plot, amateurish acting on everyone’s part, and a ridiculously childish handling of a conspiracy-based foundation for a storyline. I couldn’t even finish the film, it was that bad. This movie looks and feels like a film school final project that was crammed together on the night before it was due.

i thought the movie was great fun. i am not really interested in conspiracy theories, only those alleged by some dishonest federal agencies running msm interference for the Obama-Biden Deep State!?

Given the world of 2020, this film is not only relevant but prophetic. If the critic expects everything spelled out for him then he needs to read the 50 reading school text -“See Spot run” I found nothing so vague in this it did not prompt me to look harder for the underlying story within the story. Ella Cradock

I’m hoping that my feelings make their way to Mr. Mulvihill. Albeit several years after his review of the movie Courier X, I find compelled to respond. Seriously? Now I read your review pretty quickly and it was so wordy probably didn’t read all of it but it appears as though that you did now do not believe the Iran Contra/drug money funding guns to the Nicaraguans, did not actually happen. And if it did it was not perpetrated by our lovely government? And I use the term loosely. The TWA 800 killing of all of those innocent people. Any single finding that has come to light in all of these years is as simple as 2+2. I mean nobody can come up with anything and everything everybody says in terms of Senate hearings and investigative journalism leads to the perfect US government made storm. I’m not 100% about the 800 Explosion but there is no doubt in my mind and in millions of other minds across the world that the Iran-Contra embarrassing immoral mess that our government was involved in actually freaking happened. I hope over the years you have become better informed-given that you are still doing movie reviews. Good day BTW- I thought the acting and choppiness of her your ex was definitely a downer. But the subject matter with flight TWA and the governments involvement was right on the money.

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FILM REVIEW: “COURIER X”

By Bryan Kluger

Justin Cline here…

Courier X describes itself as “the film the CIA tried to stop.”

Does it deliver on its bombshell promise, or should the CIA have tried harder to keep it from us?

Courier X focuses on the events leading up to the explosion of TWA flight 800 in 1996 and the fallout afterward. We follow smuggler Trenlin Polenski ( Bron Boier ) as he moves from the lucrative but relatively innocuous transfer of illegal diamonds into the world of international conspiracy as the US government employs him in the fight against terrorism. Allegedly.

It’s important to add that word to any event depicted in the film as even the end credits—the typical “what happened to them?” segment that inevitably comes with films based on true stories—describe each character as “the real” so-and-so. That much should lead anyone to believe that we’ve spent the last two hours plus witnessing characters who were not real.

The biggest disappointment with the film is that there appears to be something of value buried underneath a wealth of flaws, the first and most noticeable of which is the budget. There’s no getting past the fact that the movie’s set design, lighting, and effects might be more appropriate for television. That much could be excused if not for other issues. A film limited by its budget requires a lean and mean structure coupled with ripping dialogue (think Aaron Sorkin ), not a meandering plot that does nothing to drive the story. Oftentimes, the path between point A and point B is confusing; oftentimes the entire trip feels unnecessary.

The acting is largely uninspired. Nearly every scene takes place in a small office environment that seems to have deadened the actors. The direction is all but non-existent, with the camera often lingering on actors post-conversation for some of the most awkward reactions shots I’ve seen outside of a soap opera.

Ultimately, there’s a story to tell here, but it isn’t one that should have been tackled by these filmmakers.

My advice: follow the CIA’s lead and skip this one.

Former husky model, real-life Comic Book Guy, genre-bending screenwriter, nude filmmaker, hairy podcaster, pro-wrestling idiot-savant, who has a penchant for solving Rubik's Cubes and rolling candy cigarettes on unreleased bootlegs of Frank Zappa records.

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Courier-X Reviews

Maybe the CIA tried to stop this movie as a public service.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

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Exclusive Interview: Udo Kier on Courier-X and Who Really Directed Dracula and Frankenstein

By Chris Alexander

Legendary German/American actor Udo Kier discusses his new film Courier-X and touches on his long, diverse career

German born actor Udo Kier has been beloved for decades and is know primarily for his endless roles in European cult and horror films. From Mark of the Devil to Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula (more on those below) to House on Straw Hill and beyond. In fact, you can have look at our favorite Kier performances in this feature here .

But Kier is no one trick pony. He veers effortlessly between indie fare, provocative arthouse pictures, lowbrow genre efforts and mainstream Hollywood movies. And every time, no matter how big or small the role, it’s almost a given that Udo will walk away with the movie.

Currently available on all digital platforms is one of the latest Kier vehicles, director Thomas Gulamerian’s Courier-X , a paranoid thriller that sneaks behind the scenes and examines the conspiracy theory that the White House Administration intentionally shot down the very real, very tragic Flight TWA 800. Kier plays a former member of the East German Police-The Stasi- in a multi-layered story covering the events of Flight TWA 800, a blackmail attempt on the CIA after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Gary Webb, released his on-line article, ‘Dark Alliance,’ and a clever cat-and-mouse game between a Manhattan crime boss and a smuggler of black market merchandise.

We spoke to the awesome Udo Kier about the film and touched on many aspects of his career. Enjoy!

ComingSoon.net: I love your genre work but it’s always nice to see a contemporary filmmaker use you in a serious role, like here in Courier-X.

Udo Kier: Yes, but in fact I just made several films, one with Alexander Payne and Matt Damon in Los Angeles and I just came back from New York making a movie with Vince Vaughan. None of these films are horror. It’s logical when you become known to the industry with Dracula and Frankenstein that they typecast you and want you in their horror movies. That’s how I got Blade , of course, because they were fans. But even when I was in Germany, I made nothing but serious movies with people life Fassbinder and Wim Wenders, nothing related to horror.

CS: Okay, so here you are flying around the country to star in some pretty high profile films and yet you still take on a modestly budgeted indie film like this with a first time director. What was the appeal?

Kier: Well, it was the story first. I liked the story. And the script. And the character, this ex-German Stasi who was working as an informant for the CIA. That was an interesting role. It was complex and then set against that big story of the idea of a conspiracy of the plane crash. And you know, sometimes I get scripts and there’s just nothing special and I see that anyone can play that role. But with young filmmakers, they want me. They create good roles for me because they need me. They need me for my name and they can attach me to the film and its easier to get other actors. So it’s always interesting to work with young filmmakers.

CS: Do you still audition?

Kier: Depends for who. If David Lynch wants me to audition I will do it. But a young filmmaker, no. I won’t. I haven’t auditioned for a very, very long time. I do meetings. When John Carpenter wanted me for ( Masters of Horror episode) Cigarette Burns , he invited me to lunch at Musso and Frank and then after coffee he said, okay, let’s do the film together. I think it’s important for a filmmaker to know his actors, because you have to work so closely together and you have to like them or you’ll have a horrible time.

CS: You’ve worked with Lars von Trier for decades and it’s always a joy to see you appear in his movies. Does he write roles for you?

Kier: No. We met at a festival in Germany and I saw his first film, The Element of Crime , and I had a short film there in competition and out of all the movies I saw, that was the only one where I demanded to meet the director. I was blown away. So I met him and I was expecting a kind of intense looking director, dressed in black and he was almost like a young student. A few weeks later he offered me a role in his film Medea . He said “you don’t look like a Viking so don’t shave and let your hair grow out”. So I did  and I was given the role of the king of the Vikings. We became friends and since then I was in almost every film except two. And I also became the Godfather of his first child! So what happens is he gives me a script to read and give my thoughts and I get to choose a role. For example, in Nymphomaniac , I said “what about this role?” and I get it. In Melancholia everyone talks about my part. If you have a smaller role, but if you work with a great director, they make it unforgettable.

CS: In respect to both Nymphomaniac and Melancholia, no one does disgust better than you.

Kier : (laughs) thank you. The thing is, I could have played a bigger role in Nymphomaniac , the guy who doesn’t want to have sex on the train. But I thought the funny role was the waiter who figures out where the woman put the spoon. And I like that. I like to take roles where the audience knows more than I do.

CS: In Courier-X, because you have worked all over the world and with all the greats, did you find it hard to take direction from someone who had not directed before?

Kier: No, I discussed the role. I suggest things if I think I can do it a better way and that’s what we did. The role was not written for me. If it was, it might be wrong because the writer might have seen me wrong. But Thomas and I had long conversations. The same way Alexander Payne and I did. We had lunch and discussed the role. I’m not a puppet. It’s collaborative.

CS: You started directing a film some years ago. What happened to that?

Kier: Yes… Broken Cookies . I was the writer, director, the actor…I had to do everything and after 10 days my money was flying out of the window. So I stopped the movie. I might finish it one day. I might direct something else. I bought a lot of property and I want to make a western one day, about people who want to become cowboys for a week. Lawyers, doctors…

CS: Like Westworld.

Kier: Yes, but without the science fiction.

CS: You’ve made over 100 films.

Kier: Oh, no…the internet tells me it’s over 220. But I don’t count them.

CS: A lot of people I know who have been in the business this long, cannot suspend disbelief anymore. They can’t watch and enjoy narrative films anymore. Can you?

Kier: Well, I don’t go to the cinema as much anymore. But I follow the work of certain directors, like Almodovar and Gus Van Sant, who really discovered me for America for his film My Own Private Idaho . He’s the own who got me the work permit and I just stayed in LA, have been here 25 years.

CS: I have to ask the question that I’m sure everyone asks you, for my own curiosity.

Kier: Okay, go ahead.

CS: Italian prints of your signature films Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula are not credited to director Paul Morrissey, but rather Italian filmmaker Antonio Margheriti. Who really made these movies?

Kier: Paul Morrissey of course. I will tell you the quick story. I was sitting in an airplane and I was sitting next to a young man with a beard and we started talking and he said, “Hey, what are you doing”, and I said “I am an actor”. This was the beginning of my career. So I showed him a picture of myself. And he said “wow, that’s interesting. Give me your number”. So he wrote my number on the last page of his American passport. And I said to him and I said, “who are you, what are you doing”. And he said “I am Paul Morrissey, I direct for Andy Warhol” and shortly after that, three months later, I got a call. “Hey, it’s Paul from New York! I’m making Frankenstein for Carlo Ponti and I have a little role for you!” I asked what the role was. He said “Frankenstein”. So, Flesh for Frankenstein was made in 3D. And why Margheriti is credited on some prints is that there were too many Europeans in the film and by law you had to have a European director on set. I met Antonio before because of his movies in Spain and Italy. Fellini was shooting next door to us. On the last day of shooting, Morrissey came to me and said, “well I guess we have a German Dracula”. I said “who?” He said “you!”. I had to lose a lot of weight in three weeks so I starved myself and only ate leaves and drank water. At the beginning of Dracula, I sat in a wheelchair because I didn’t have any power. Not only Robert De Niro physically prepares himself for movies, I do as well!

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Courier-X Reviews

• 2 hr 14 mins
• Drama, Suspense
• Watchlist Where to Watch

In this deft thriller, a smuggler is recruited to help with a CIA cover-up, which involves blackmail and a journalist who has unearthed a shocking conspiracy.

The Courier

“The Courier” will evoke memories of prior spy movies and the tropes they often employ. More specifically, you may be reminded of the superior Cold War-era spy-swapping 2015 film, “ Bridge of Spies .” Both films are based on real events and have Russian spies, imprisoned agents, and a swap between Russia and the West. Here, however, the swap is not an integral part of the main story, and the Russian spy is working for MI6 and the CIA. As in Spielberg’s film, this is a meditation on the individual cost of doing something not for personal gain but for the common good. There’s a whole set of cinematic clichés that come with stories like that, and adding them to this mix risks overcrowding. But cliché is not a bad thing if it’s done right, especially if they involve characters to root for and a fair amount of high stakes to overcome.

Director Dominic Cooke and screenwriter Tom O’Connor tell the “based on true events” story of Greville Wynne ( Benedict Cumberbatch ). Wynne was a British businessman who, from 1960 and 1962, smuggled thousands of pieces of intel out of Russia before he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for two years by the KGB. Assisting him in his role as “courier” is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. Wynne’s role as a salesman who works his magic on Eastern European clients makes him a good smuggler; as a Brit, he’s assumed to be a purely capitalist creature whose only concern is money. Couple that with his superb talent for schmoozing and boozing with customers, and he emerges as someone who’s neither suspicious nor a potential danger to Soviet security.

Wynne is surprised to be recruited by MI6’s Dickie Franks ( Angus Wright ) who, along with CIA agent Emily Donovan ( Rachel Brosnahan ), convinces him to meet with Penkovsky, because any intel will help President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. She assures him he’ll be safe. Initially, Wynne turns them down because the entire idea seems incredulous. He has no formal training. Plus, he’s a family man with a precocious young son, Andrew (Keir Hills) and a loving, forgiving wife, Sheila ( Jessie Buckley ). Sheila’s pardoning nature revealed itself after Wynne took those dirty jokes about traveling salesmen to heart. Sudden trips to Moscow, frequent trips he can’t tell his wife about in any regard, are bound to arouse her suspicions about new infidelities.

“The Courier” makes the connection that Wynne’s job of “making the clients happy” has the same thespian qualities of being a spy: He is playing a role, one that requires him to hide his true feelings and present a specific, carefully calibrated, unflappable front. Penkovsky reassures him that he’s handling the job well. As the two family men spend more time together, their guards lower and the two become close friends. Cumberbatch and Ninidze do a very good job conveying their newfound bond, which helps the viewer swallow the unbelievable decision that sets the second half of the film in motion.

The first hour, which focuses on the existing and budding human relationships in England and in Russia, plays better than the prison-bound second hour. There’s a sweet, realistic dynamic between Sheila and Greville. Buckley gives an excellent performance that carries her over to the predictable moment when she has to pivot to the strong spouse cautiously awaiting the return of her husband. Of course, she’s convinced Greville is cheating when she catches him exercising more than he’s ever done, not to mention that he’s trying new things he’s never considered before in bed. Buckley handles this with the right touch of bemusement and forcefulness, warning that she won’t be so understanding if there’s another woman. Her best scene is when she realizes the true nature of her husband’s secrecy, and how she may never have the chance to tell him she’s sorry for not trusting him

We also spend time with Penkovsky and his wife and daughter. Their scenes are just as loving as the Wynnes’, but they’re tinged with more danger. Penkovsky is a decorated former soldier with many security clearances, and as he tells Wynne, everyone in Russia has eyeballs that surveil for the state. One can easily predict that Penkovsky’s espionage work will catch up with him, but it’s a bumpier road to believing that Wynne would risk life and limb to go back in to try and help him defect. Once he’s captured, “The Courier” loses steam as it isolates its main character for violent prison scenes that we’ve seen endless times before. Those sequences culminate in a jail cell reunion between Penkovsky and Wynne that’s memorable because it wears its empathy like a sentimental badge of honor.

Though there’s nothing new or transformative here, “The Courier” stays afloat due to the acting by Buckley, Cumberbatch, and Ninidze. Unfortunately, Brosnahan’s performance is flat. Her character feels completely out of place here, as if Donovan were thrown in to inject an American into a very British story. Her one big scene, where she tries to terrify Wynne by describing the four minutes he’d have if a nuke were heading for London, is unconvincing and doesn’t have the reverse psychology effect the film thinks it does. I was a bit surprised that “The Courier” worked for me as well as it did, and I must give some credit to Sean Bobbitt ’s moody cinematography and Abel Korzeniowski ’s engaging score. Their work gave the illusion that this film could have been made in the timeframe it is set. That sealed the deal for me.

Odie Henderson

Odie “Odienator” Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

• Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne
• Merab Ninidze as Oleg Penkovsky
• Rachel Brosnahan as Emily Donovan
• Jessie Buckley as Sheila Wynne
• Angus Wright as Dickie Franks
• Kirill Pirogov as Gribanov
• Abel Korzeniowski
• Dominic Cooke
• Gareth C. Scales
• Tariq Anwar

Cinematographer

• Sean Bobbitt
• Tom O’Connor

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Courier X (2016)

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