Movie Review: The Courier (2019)

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There are two things I learned while watching The Courier. If you're planning to assassinate the only living government witness before he anonymously testifies against a New York mobster and you want to get away with it, you're going to need a patsy. And as far as patsies go, it's never a good idea to choose someone with a background in black ops, as the villains of director Zackary Adler's new thriller discover when they send an unnamed courier played by Olga Kurylenko on an unknowingly lethal errand shortly into the movie.

Left holding the bag when the package she delivers to a witness in protective custody takes out the room, the ex Ukranian military specialist makes it her special mission to protect the witness (Amit Shah) so that he can live to testify another day.

Of course to do that, she'll have to get out of the parking garage, which is where the courier and the witness soon find themselves trapped by the villainous B-team who — not wanting to fail like their colleagues upstairs — have chained up every exit and started patrolling each level like enemy territory during wartime. Outfitted and armed to the teeth with everything from smart guns that only their trigger fingers can fire to security cameras, walkie talkies, and drones, Kurylenko has no choice but to pick them off one-by-one with whatever means she can find, whether that's through hand-to-hand or vehicular combat.

Die Hard by way of P2 except with a Jane McClane instead of John McClane in the role of our protagonist, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko is sensational in this ambitious gender swapped B-movie that dares to have a woman guard a helpless dude-in-distress while flipping the script on traditional genre fare.

Maximizing its bare bones set piece as action dictates plot, although eventually The Courier's otherwise inventive fight scenes grow so repetitive that it devolves into torture porn as Adler continually ups the stakes in its final act, overall it serves as an ingenuously conceived reminder that filmmakers are limited not by budget as much as by their own imaginations.

So wholly engrossing in its one setting in fact, the film loses us whenever it ventures from London to New York for filler scenes with Gary Oldman's cartoonishly over-the-top mobster, who — conducting opera like he's back in Leon: The Professional — belongs in an entirely different movie.

Written by a veritable committee of writers (numbering four), who each seem to have a different goal or genre in mind, The Courier flirts with Jason Bourne-ish conspiracy and De Palma gangster camp in just two of its dead-end subplots. Set largely in real time, while admittedly, the film never fully comes together, there's still enough excitement throughout for us to disregard the sum and focus instead on its many electrifying parts.

Tethering it to the realm of grindhouse action whenever Adler's gritty thriller starts to stray, the fully committed Olga Kurylenko is there to deliver the film's one final lesson. Bobbing and weaving to head off danger as she looks for any opportunity to get the upper hand, the quick thinking Courier convinces us that — rather than a patsy in the middle of a conspiracy — all we really need for ninety-nine minutes is a woman in a parking garage who's ready to kick ass.

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Zodiac

Click Here to Read the More In-Depth Blu-ray Review

Director: David Fincher

Although I loved David Fincher’s Fight Club and Panic Room, I still remember being absolutely repulsed and terrified by the exploitative, disturbing Seven—so much so in fact that it was with great hesitation that I sat down to watch Zodiac—Fincher’s return to the serial killer genre. However, humans are advised to face their fears for a reason and I couldn’t have been more surprised or impressed by Zodiac which, despite a few brutal and gory crimes in the beginning to set the tone of obsession that will follow, quickly becomes what Roger Ebert justifiably called the “All the President’s Men of serial killer movies, with Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist.” Opening with Paramount and Warner Brothers logos that IMDb reported were nearly identical to the ones used in the 1960’s, we are plunged back in time to a long hot summer where two young lovers are murdered in their local make-out spot in the San Francisco Bay Area. The killer phones the police with cold, yet giddy excitement filled with details of his crime and later decides to send letters and ciphers to local papers including The San Francisco Chronicle. Crime beat reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) begins his series of articles on the man who soon named himself Zodiac and proceeded to break his own pattern with two more murders seen in the first half hour that, although shocking, do not seem quite as exploitative or as painstakingly gruesome as the ones exhibited on a typical CSI or Law and Order spin off series. The sudden succession of crimes in the beginning admirably, as most critics noted, gets the traditional horror out of the way so that for the rest of the case we can get lost in the mystery as Avery along with former Eagle Scout, Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) who later wrote the definitive book on the case begin trying to solve it. Their efforts consist largely of a love of research and bookwork that present a more academic side to the case, which is balanced out by the "just the facts" mentality and efforts of a talented group of police officers, including Anthony Edward’s Inspector William Armstrong and his compulsive animal cracker eating partner, the scene-stealing Mark Ruffalo’s Inspector Dave Toschi who movie buffs may recall was McQueen’s inspiration for Bullitt. The two inspectors try to coordinate their exchange of information with other local cops from nearby cities including Sgt. Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas), and Capt. Ken Narlow (Donal Logue), among others. Although he’s a bit young for his role as Graysmith, there’s a certain natural boy scout quality about Jake Gyllenhaal that has us instantly on the admittedly nerdy hero’s side in his Clark Kent like quest that dangerously becomes such a preoccupation that he begins to receive anonymous calls at his home and his actions threaten the stability of the family he has with second wife Chloe Sevigny. Philip Baker Hall, Brian Cox, Adam Goldberg, Dermot Mulroney, Clea Duvall, James LeGros, Ione Skye (un-credited but her father Donovan’s "Hurdy Gurdy Man" is featured on the soundtrack) and a chilling turn by John Carroll Lynch as prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen help us get lost in the compelling film with an admirable attention to detail that entrances viewers so much that it isn’t until later that one realizes the amount of visual artistry at work from former music video director David Fincher who’s a subtle stylist and received a much-deserved nomination for the 2007 Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Further research into his deliberate choices revealed that he cast numerous actors in the role of the Zodiac so that, for each scene, it reflects the victims’ and witnesses' impression of the perpetrator. It’s these little touches that are so easily lost in the crisp high definition digital cinematography by Harris Savides that calls to mind the same look of the work of Michael Mann. As someone who was very unfamiliar with the case and like some movie fans just recall the name and the facts being used as fodder for Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, it’s hard for me to judge whether or not viewers well-versed in the case will find it all too introspective and contemplative but it worked well for me and is one definite entry on the very short list of my favorite films of 2007; although sadly, I worry that it was released too early in the year to be first and foremost in the minds of Academy voters.