The Courier has Olga Kurylenko as, you guessed it, a courier. Her job is to drop of a special camera to a London apartment so a witness, Amit Shah, can give closed-circuit testimony in a trial in Washington, DC involving crime boss Gary Oldman. When she gets there though, she discovers her package is actually poisonous gas, so she gets Shah out of there with the hope of saving him so he can testify. Not so fast though, dirty US government agent on the scene William Moseley locks down the apartment building's garage and allows Oldman's hired goons the chance to take her and Shah out. At the same time, his boss, Dermot Mulroney, is back in the States thinking Moseley is trying to help keep Shah safe. Will Kurylenko survive and get her and Shah out of there alive?
Let's start with the good: Kurylenko is great, she's exactly the badass action lead you'd want in a flick like this. Now for the bad. The movie is longer than it needs to be, and to pad it out, we get these sequences of Oldman under house arrest that aren't that great, and almost feel grafted in. Moseley is trying to give us his best Oldman from The Professional, and I don't know how well he pulls it off, giving us a not-so-great baddie combined with Oldman's grafted on baddie which both give us nothing to work with while we're in scenes that don't have Kurylenko in them. That's a problem, because as great as Kurylenko is, there's only so much you can do in a confined space like an apartment parking garage before it feels like we're spinning our wheels--no pun intended. And then we have Amit Shah's character, which is just a screaming guy who's more annoying than entertaining. I'm not sure why films add characters like this, because annoying the audience should never be a goal of a filmmaker. Finally we end the film with the most expected twist ever with Dermot Mulroney's character--so expected in fact that had they not gone with it, it would've been more unexpected than the fact that they did it. If you're a Kurylenko fan though, this does deliver, which may be enough to merit a watch.
Speaking of Kurylenko, this is her 5th film on the site, which seems like a small number--and it is--but in the all-time ranking of women stars on the DTVC, she's only three behind Kathleen Kinmont, who is second on the list after Cynthia Rothrock and her immense 42. Granted, between her and Kinmont are 8 names, including newly inducted Hall of Famer Shannon Tweed (7), another Hall of Famer in Julie Strain (6), Andy Sidaris mainstay Dona Speir (6), and one of the all-time greats, Vivica A. Fox (7). If anyone could pass those names though, it's definitely Kurylenko, as she has some great stuff coming down the pike, and she's carving out a name for herself as one of the best action leads in the business. This is one that, while the film itself is lackluster, her performance is still great, and to me that's always the sign of a great star. She's been getting great reviews for her performance in Boudica: Queen of War, the newest Jesse V. Johnson flick, so I can't wait to see her in that one.
As far as Gary Oldman, this is our first time seeing him on the site, and to be honest, I'm not sure why he's in this at all. He doesn't do much beyond sit in a robe with his eye patch and bark orders on the phone or eat nice meals set to classical music. Obviously he provides a name on the tin that, when combined with Olga Kurylenko in leather pants, garners the streams a film like this is looking for, but when you actually get stuck in and find out the Oldman you're getting feels grafted on as an afterthought, it's kind of not worth it, no matter how great Kurylenko is in her scenes. If you were to tell me a film was employing "Gary Oldman in an eye patch" padding I'd tell you that sounds fantastic, but the reality unfortunately isn't as much fun as the idea. Considering it's been over 1200 posts before we had our first Gary Oldman film, I don't know when we'll see him again, so if this is it, it's a shame it wasn't under better circumstances, but I guess it's nice that we even had him at all.
Mr. Dermot Mulroney is back. We last saw him with a Grecian Formula mustache over a gray beard in Section 8, which was a fantastic turn as a baddie. Here he's an agent on the phone, one we're just waiting until the big reveal that he's actually a crooked cop in the employ of our be-eye-patched baddie. He is perfect for the government agent or higher-up detective role though, he looks great in a suit, does a great job talking on the phone, or scowling behind a desk, and can pull off being earnest when we know full well that he's on the take, we're just waiting for the big reveal. It looks like at this stage he's gone full-on DTV, so we should be expecting to see him on the DTVC even more in the coming year or so--we already have The Getback in the can from when Ty and I discussed it on a previous podcast episode. Hopefully he does more than just playing government agents on the take, but if not, at least he's good at it.
Finally, going back to the Oldman performance, I looked in the IMDb trivia, and there were some great, snarky fake entries for that. One said "Gary Oldman only accepted the role after the director agreed to alter all the actor cues 'sit', 'walk' and 'run' in the script to 'sit down sipping a beverage'." Another said "Gary Oldman stated his role [in this] was one of the most physically intensive of his career to date." I love this kind of thing, but I feel like IMDb should lean into it a bit more. Right now you only have a thumbs up or a thumbs down to say that the trivia is helpful or not. Why not include a laughing emoji option? Like the one on The Fast and the Furious that said the filmmakers originally intended to cast Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, and Dustin Diamond; or the ones you see on a lot of the Seagal films' entries, like A Dangerous Man, that had this gem in the trivia: " 'A Dangerous Man' is not only the title of the film but a smart nod to Steven Segal himself, who has been known to become a 'dangerous man' when he is hungry." On the other hand, I get too why IMDb might not want a laughing emoji for the joke trivia: without it, there's still that sliver of hope that the joke trivia is actually real, and we all could use a little more hope in our lives, couldn't we?
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, The Courier is actually available on Netflix here in the States. It has its flaws, and could've been better for sure, but if you're a Kurylenko fan, it's worth a watch. Also if you're a Kurylenko fan, check out the podcast episode on her that I did with Will from Exploding Helicopter, from June 13th of this year, number 127 in the archives.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8075016
And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.
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