2020 ( UK | USA ) ( Drama, History, Thriller )
DIRECTOR: Dominic Cooke
STARRING: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan
The real-life story of a salesman turned spy is adapted into this cold war espionage thriller. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville Wynne, a businessman who was recruited by MI6 to act as its contact with Oleg Penkovsky, a Soviet intelligence officer so alarmed by Khrushchev that, in the early 1960s, he supplied the service with vital information about the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons. Wynne is meant to travel to Moscow only the once but is soon pressed into further service and over several visits he becomes friends with Penkovsky. As far as the ever-watching KGB is concerned, Wynne is feeding Penkovsky useful titbits of information about British industry, but then they realise what is really happening…
Dominic Cooke’s true-life drama explores how history can be made by the most humble of people committing the smallest of actions
(1hr 52min)