Hey, Gang… after a year of COVID 19 lockdown I was champing at the bit to go back to theaters and see movies up on the big silver screen. And since I had already gotten my first COVID shot in February (and being a bit reckless by nature) I started going back to our favorite cinema at the Fallen Timbers mall in early March to take in afternoon matinees. I quickly discovered that I was much safer there, social distance-wise, than I was at dine-in restaurants… which I had been going to for the past year. HEY! I don’t cook and an old geezer’s gotta eat… OK?!
Anyway, I went to three different matinee movies in March and in every case there were less than a dozen people in the whole auditorium. PLENTY of social distance!
The first movie I saw was “The Marksman” with Liam Neeson doing his usual sympathetic tough-guy character. Good, solid action-adventure stuff… although I think Liam is getting a little long in the tooth for the kick-ass routines.
The second movie was “Chaos Walking” with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley. This is a sci-fi thriller set in the future after a pandemic has ravaged the world. And, yes; one can draw intriguing comparisons between the movie’s predictions and our current situation. The most entertaining conceit about this movie is the proposition that an after-effect of the pandemic leaves women with the capability of reading mens’ thoughts… a development that men do NOT take kindly! This is a situation that provides some prickly screen chemistry between the most recent Spider-Man and the strong feminist from the latest Star Wars trilogy.
However, It is “The Courier” that has really tripped my trigger and floated my boat since resuming my attendance at theaters. My Friends, you will be pleased to learn that our fond screen idol, Benedict Cumberbatch… he of Star Trek and Dr. Strange glory… has set another high bar in character portrayal. This time he plays a real-life character from recent history; a British businessman, Greville Wynne, who played a key role during the most intense period of the U.S. - Soviet cold war: the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962.
Now I must confess that the main reason I found this movie so fascinating was because I lived through those turbulent early 60s years; first as a young college drop-out (due to lack of funds) and then as an enlisted man in the U,S. Air Force. There was a draft back then and with Vietnam starting to heat up, I felt it was smarter to enlist in the Air force than to wait and get drafted into the Army. As things turned out, it proved to be a very good choice.
The movie covers a time frame of several years both preceding and following the Cuban Missile Crisis. You get a condensed summary of the major events and key players involved in the deadly dance of power the East and West engaged in during those years. And you get delightful visual and audio signs of the times along the way. Well… delightful to me anyway. After all, those were my young man years fondly remembered. Perhaps this movie won’t be so fascinating to people who weren’t alive back then. But I was and, more to the point, my life was directly affected by events.
I was nearing the end of my Intelligence Operations training in October, 1962, when all bases were put on red alert as the Cuban Missile Crisis flared up. Afterward, I was assigned to a 3-year tour of duty at an Intelligence operations squadron in West Germany. I arrived at my new duty post in December of 1962.
The Berlin wall had been installed a year earlier in 1961 by the Soviets and the cold war was full on. The Kennedy administration had responded with a daily airlift to keep West Berliners supplied with necessities and U.S. military forces had been greatly built up throughout Europe, but mostly in west Germany. I guess I was just one small part of that build-up.
During the three years I spent stationed near Wiesbaden, Germany, I got to travel around much of western Europe on leaves. On one of those forays a couple of my G.I. buddies and I got on one of the sealed trains that were allowed to travel from West Germany through East Germany and into West Berlin. We spent three days touring that amazing city. The most impressive part of that visit was a bus tour along several miles of the Berlin Wall. And, YES… I got photos of the infamous Checkpoint Charlie!
Well, “The Courier” isn’t so much concerned with the Berlin Wall as it is with the Cuban Missile Crisis… and the lives of two men, one Russian and one British, who were crucial to events in that historic showdown between Khrushchev and President Kennedy. I don’t think the world has ever come any closer to nuclear Armageddon than at that point.
So we all know the history of that event. But the two spies who were instrumental in HOW it played out are the main subjects of this movie. And that is the genius of “The Courier”. We are shown the very human background of these men and their families. Both are very sympathetic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cumberbatch play a more vulnerable or realistic character. Which is why I am predicting that he will be nominated for a “best actor” Oscar in 2022. Perhaps his fellow actor, Merab Ninidze, playing the Russian spy, will be nominated for “best supporting actor” as well. And there could be other nominations: “best director”, “best screenplay”, “best dramatic documentary”?
We only have to wait a year to find out!
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