The Courier True Story: The Real Greville Wynne & Cold War Story

screenrant.com:

The historical Cold War-era drama The Courier is based on the true story of Greville Wynne, a British businessman who became an unlikely MI6 agent in the early 1960s. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, and began streaming on Amazon Prime Video in 2021 after a short theatrical release. Inspired by the extraordinary efforts of an ordinary man, Tom O’Connor wrote the script. Directed by Dominic Cooke,The Courier stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange) as Greville Wynne and Merab Ninidze as Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Penkovsky. Here's the answer to «is The Courier a true story?».

The film begins in the early 1960s, when Penkovsky, a high-ranking member of the Soviet's GRU agency, uses American students to deliver a message to the United States about nuclear operations in the Soviet Union. In the letter, he also shares his desire to defect from the Soviet Union and agreed to pass along top secret information from the government. Starting with his recruitment to join MI6, The Courier follows Greville Wynne as he forges an unlikely friendship with Penkovsky and becomes an unexpected spy for the British and American intelligence agencies.

Related: Is The Last Letter From Your Lover Based On A True Story?

In passing along the information stolen by Penkovsky, the two men played a role in deterring an all-out nuclear war. How Penkovsky and Wynne did it, how they were caught, and what happened to them next is the focus ofThe Courier. Examining this moment in Cold War Era history, the film does a good job of remaining historically accurate with a few minor adjustments for dramatic effect. But in condensing the content into a two-hour feature, there are also a lot of details of the true story that