The Courier is a 2019 action film about a courier in London who discovers that the package she’s delivering puts her straight into a fight for her life.
After international crime boss Ezekiel Mannings (Gary Oldman) is taken by FBI agents and placed under house arrest in anticipation of a trial, a key witness named Nick Murch (Amit Shah) is transported by Interpol to testify, flanked by an elite team of bodyguards. At a bunker attached to an underground parking garage, they wait for a package before he will be linked via live video feed to a courtroom. That package is on the back of a female motorcycle courier (Olga Kurylenko), who specializes in speed and efficiency. Thing is, it’s a cyanide bomb in her bag, and when it detonates, it kills all the guards but leaves Murch alive, forcing The Courier to become his only protection.
One can’t really fault director (and co-writer) Zackary Adler for trying to give his new film The Courier some style, the decidedly small film limited by a narrow story forced to rely on its action to pad out the rest. The problem is that it’s all rather hokey, packed with transparent, over-clichéd characters and meaningless violence that it lacks any investment: two people are trapped in a garage and a bunch of goons want to kill them. That might have had some potential for tension, but there’s barely an ounce of authenticity, with dialogue so hopelessly tacky it fails nearly on any level in being the least bit entertaining.
You might think there is some saving grace in all this with Oldman in the driver’s seat so to speak, and sure, he embraces the goofiness of his role, wearing a pirate eye patch, listening to opera music, and spending most of his screen time sitting in a chair sneering like a third rate Bond villain, his speaking volume either barely a whisper or shattering glass. Then there’s FBI Agent Bryant (William Moseley), who is clearly imbalanced, reveling in his madness, making it all the more unconvincing that he would ever even be in the position he is in. His performance is what maybe a Screenwriters 101 course might define as “Don’t do this is in your movie.”
What is good though is Kurylenko as the unnamed hero, she an actor that really deserves a starring role like this but in a better film. Proving herself well capable of being the acton lead, she’s got great timing and tremendous commitment to the one-against-many movie trope, balancing the fist-a-cuffs with the sexy and doing it right, kickin’ arse all over the place. Truly. She’s has more than a few rough moments where she goes (pardon the expression) ball to the walls in laying down the boom and dang if it isn’t a lot of fun to watch. Indeed, she is everything about why anyone would or should watch.
Unfortunately, everytime the film cuts away from her, it loses ground, everything surrounding her far too flimsy to matter. Adler definitely knows how to do action, staging a few solid moments that fit with punches and kicks landing where they should. There’s even some good work with explosions and he uses the limited space to great effect, finding all kinds of interesting nooks and crannies to explore. It’s just too bad it’s all so bland and uninspired, the potential for an interesting game of cat and mouse derailed by the cartoonish approach and lack of humanity.