I’m calling an early shot here: if there’s one movie out of Sundance 2020 that stands a decent shot at a Best Picture nomination almost a year from now, it’s very likely The Courier (formerly titled Ironbark). The Cold War espionage thriller takes a classical approach to its telling, leaning into familiar biopic/historical nonfiction tropes, while viewing events through an extremely humanistic lens.

The result is a moving spy caper that allows the characters to inform the drama and tension rather than allowing historical events to outweigh and overcome the human element. More in the vein of a Bridge of Spies than a Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, The Courier explores the brinkmanship of American-Russian political relations in the early 1960s through the context of a single bromance.

Emotionally powerful, marked by fantastic acting, and confident character-driven storytelling with a third act that really clocked me, The Courier is a movie that’ll have people talking. From Benedict Cumberbatch’s fine-tuned lead performance, likely his best onscreen performance yet, to the carefully measured and restrained direction from Dominic Cooke, who imports much of his experience working in the world of theater, Ironbark is an intelligent crowdpleaser that speaks to the huge heroism of handshake between friends.

Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch) is an unremarkable businessman. Recruited by British intelligence agent Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and CIA official Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) to courier secrets from soviet informant Oleg (Merab Ninidze) from Moscow to London, Greville is selected precisely because of his ordinariness. The normal man eventually takes to extraordinary tasks. As the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis cranks up and Russian officials begin to look more closely into the close relationship developed between Greville and Oleg, the two men must put their lives at risk to prevent all-out nuclear war.

Checking all the boxes of a historically-tinged dramatic steamroller, The Courier performs its role mightily, playing its own game of brinkmanship with your tear ducts. I did not go into this film expecting to have an emotional reaction and yet the film effected me greatly, moving me to tears on more than one occasion. As Cooke himself noted, lots of spies movies are cold. Ironbark is written from a place of great heart, exploring the true cost of secreted heroism, including the deterioration of Greville’s home life.

As Greville’s participation in international espionage becomes more active, the tone of the movie shifts. What begins as a fairly light-hearted film with a good amount of cheer and small laughs evolves into a searing piece of drama, rife with soaring emotional highs and excellent performance beats. The score from Abel Korzeniowski wears at the heartstrings while frequent Steve McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbit uses smoky lighting to illuminate the darkness of Soviet cells and the recesses of the human heart both.

In an age of great political unrest, screenwriter Tom O’Connor (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) notes the precariousness of peace, particularly when an unstable leader’s finger lingers over a big red launch button. Whereas some movies leave the world to hang in the balance, Ironbark knows that we know our history and so the lingering threat of nuclear obliteration only holds so much water. Focusing on the human element behind it instead, the two men who risked everything to prevent feuding nations from taking an irreversible turn, the stakes are amplified because we truly don’t know how it will turn out.

CONCLUSION: A stirring dramatic thriller with a career-best onscreen turn from Benedict Cumberbatch, ‘The Courier‘ explores the events of the Cold War through ground-level heroism, focusing on the human element and how the actions of a few dictate the course of history. Dominic Cooke expertly crescendos events into big tear-inducing moments…so be prepared for your emotions to get nuked.

*This is a reprint from our Sundance 2020 coverage.