cold war | Destined for Mediocrity

The Cold War was a time of great paranoia. Was Russia going to blow everyone up? Was your next door neighbor a spy? Were the people teaching your children or making your movies Communists? Unfortunately, over 30 years after the Cold War officially ended, some of these questions still remain. But instead of talking politics, let’s talk about movies. These are the Top 10 Cold War Era Films…according to me.

10. North By Northwest

Not Hitchcock’s best by a long shot. Not Cary Grant’s best by a longer shot. But it is the best film involving Mount Rushmore. It’s a classic thriller – a story of mistaken identity where our hero is in the wrong place at the wrong time, where a perfectly-timed photo might not be as it appears, where government agencies willingly put individuals at risk for the “greater good”. It’s hokey, but it’s a lot of fun, and it’s got that iconic shot of Cary Grant running from a plane.

9. The Courier

Benedict Cumberbatch is the British electrical equipment salesman, Greville Wynne, who serves his country by acting as a courier between England and Russia. He befriends his Russian correspondent and learns that not all comrades are bad, but the ones that are bad, are really bad. Merab Ninidze claims the screen as Oleg Penkovsky.

8. The Hunt for Red October

Alec Baldwin plays CIA analyst, Jack Ryan, before Harrison Ford came along and played it better. Tensions build and claustrophobia looms large as Ryan must work out negotiations between defecting Soviet naval captain, Marko Ramius – Sean Connery’s best role, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees – and the United States before the U.S. and Russian navies come to blows and destroy one another.

7. Rocky IV

“If I can change, we all can change,” Rocky yells at a crowd of Russians after he has knocked out their favorite boxer, Ivan Drogo, and turned an arena full of boos into cheers. It’s a rallying moment for the audience too, since we’re all relieved that he not only won, but avenged his rival and friend, Apollo Creed. This movie features not one, but two training montages set to cheesy 80’s tunes that should definitely be on everyone’s workout playlist.

6. The Iron Giant

Hogarth Hughes is your typical nine-year-old boy. He loves comic books and riding his bike – oh! – and he befriends a 50-foot robot from outer space. Having a giant, iron robot for a best friend is tough enough, but it’s even tougher when you have a U.S. government agent staying at your house, investigating the mysterious goings-on in the town of Rockwell. Luckily, Hogarth knows Dean McCoppin, a beatnik artist, who helps hide his new alien friend.

5. Hail, Caesar!

Like some of the other films on this list, the Cold War is really just the backdrop of this Coen Brothers ode to Hollywood. A group of blacklisted Communist screenwriters are pulling the strings of some of the film’s major events, but this movie is mostly about Eddie Mannix, the studio fixer who is tasked with keeping the stars’ improper personal lives out of the hands of the gossip columnist. He’s got a lot on his plate when his big movie star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney playing another classic Coen doofus), goes missing in the middle of filming the studio’s big sword and sandals picture.

4. The Lives of Others

Simply one of the best spy movies of all time. Gerd Wiesler, or HGW XX/7, is a captain of the Stasi who has been instructed to bug and survey the apartment of Georg Dreyman, a playwright whose sole crime is the fact that he’s dating an actress who has caught the eye of the Minister of Culture. Wiesler wrestles with the morality of his position after learning the true reason for his assignment, and decides to play the role of Dreyman’s guardian angel. A traitor with a moral compass makes for the best character studies.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Based on the novel by Le Carre, this star-studded British spy drama leaves you guessing until the very end. George Smiley must investigate within his agency to find who of the higher-ups in British Intelligence is a mole for the Soviets. Red herring after red herring gets in his way until he finally gets down to the bottom of it. And by then, what has Smiley lost in the process? Gary Oldman leads a cast of heavy-hitters that include Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, and Tom Hardy.

2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Slim Pickens riding a missile like a horse, Peter Sellers (in one of his three roles) wrestling with his own artificial hand, Sterling Hayden’s rant about what the Communists are going to do to everyone’s bodily fluids, the phone call with Dmitri – there are too many great scenes in this film to list them all. Satirically skewering national relations during the Cold War, Stanley Kubrick left none alive in one of the funniest movies of all time.

1. The Third Man

This film is nearly perfect and certainly one of the best Noirs of all time. Impeccably acted and supremely shot, this movie withstands all tests of time. Holly Martins comes to Vienna at the request of his old childhood friend, Harry Lime, only to discover upon his arrival that Lime is dead. Conflicting accounts on who was present at Lime’s death lead Martins on a twisted ride through the streets of Vienna and down into its sewers for one of the most exciting endings to any film, ever. Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles are at their absolute best in this masterpiece of cinema.

The Courier is a based-on-a-true-story, Cold War-era, spy drama. Bet you’ve never seen one of those before. This well-tread, trope-riddled film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the true-life electrical equipment salesman, Greville Wynne, who is recruited by MI6 to act as a courier (hence the clever film title) between England and Russia, carrying secret documents back and forth between the countries in an attempt to prevent nuclear war. His Russian contact is Oleg Penkovsky, a high-ranking GRU officer, brilliantly played by Merab Ninidze who also played an interrogator in the similar Spielberg film, Bridge of Spies. And it wouldn’t be a war film without the U.S. getting involved, so Rachel Brosnahan fills out the cast as the fictitious CIA agent, Emily Donovan.

Many comparisons to other Cold War spy films, especially Bridge of Spies, are easy to make, but where this one sets itself apart from the rest of the pack is that The Courier is not boring. Of course there’s still plenty of roundtable dialogue in this movie, and intrigue disguising itself as decent plot, but it’s a tightly-edited feature (running at under 2 hours, unlike the majority of others in its subgenre) that only drags a little in the third act.

Greville is constantly looking over his shoulder for any Russian bogeymen out to get him after he agrees to be a courier, and his paranoia keeps him from being able to relax, even when he returns home to London throughout the picture. Oleg fairs little better, but feigns confidence in their secrecy for Greville’s sake. The bond between these two men carry the film, as there is plenty of time spent on them getting to know one another, experiencing what their respective countries have to offer, and spending time with each other’s families. Even small things like Greville’s emotional reaction to a Russian ballet would make you roll your eyes in a lesser movie, but here it’s given just the right amount of weight to avoid tipping over into shmaltzy.

And in this lies what makes the movie truly enjoyable to watch: while other spy films have played the “there’s good and bad on both sides” angle ad nauseum, The Courier doesn’t overdo it. It lets scenes play and allows the audience to collect what it wants to as it builds toward its melancholic climax. I won’t spoil it here, but suffice to say, “War is Hell.”

The Courier is not without it’s problems. While the script is decent, the dialogue is a little on the nose at times. One early scene is Oleg bringing the CIA and MI6 initial information regarding Premier Nikita Khruschev’s nuclear plans, and Emily Donovan comforts him with a speech about how scared he must be to betray his country, and Oleg nods and says, “Khruschev frightens me. He is impulsive, chaotic – a man like that not have nuclear commands.” Perhaps a true statement, but it sounds like something a 16-year-old Twitter user would say about a certain former American President. A small stumbling block in an otherwise enjoyable historical spy thriller.

Verdict: I think I’m going to keep this one. It may not be one I return to very frequently, but I believe it deserves a spot on any movie collector’s shelf.

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