Wednesday October 12th 2022
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UK 2020 112mins
Director: Dominic Cooke

One way of learning history is to live it. A seemingly dull British businessman (Benedict Cumberbatch) gets to live his part of history which was very much not what he wanted. During the Cuban missile crisis he is cajoled into helping British Intelligence (“Am I to be a spy?”) on his previously safe routine business trips to Moscow. His bumbling Britishness puzzles the Russians. With no James Bond gadgets to help him he is about as far away from a James Bond character as it is possible to get. He seems the perfect ‘courier’– until it all goes wrong.