The real-life story of salesman turned spy Greville Wynne is loosely adapted into this cold war drama that combines plenty of the ingredients for a first-class espionage thriller but doesn’t quite deliver. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wynne, an adequately successful British businessman with a weakness for booze who finds himself a courier for and a friend to high-level Soviet informer Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze).
Royal Court theatre alumnus and film-maker Dominic Cooke (On Chesil Beach) directs, dressing the story in a suitably ominous colour palette and capturing the oppressive sense of lives surveilled. But with slack pacing and insufficient focus, the film lacks the crackle of tension and propulsive efficiency of something like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
