Kurier review – Polish war hero fights through gritty spy thriller

A Polish agent follows a perilous route from London to Warsaw in this taut and arresting piece of storytelling

Given Poland’s nationalist turn under Andrzej Duda, you have to wonder about which audience this doughty but slightly self-pitying second world war spy thriller is meant to serve. Philippe Tłokiński stars as Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, emissary of the Polish government in exile in London struggling to make his way back across Europe to a Warsaw resistance caught between a Nazi rock and a Soviet hard place. The film has a taste for defiant proclamations – “Giving up for the first time in our history will surely break the spirit of this nation!” – that you imagine will put a spring in the step of the new breed of Polish EU-shin-kickers.

Having said that, Władysław Pasikowski – a crowdpleasing film-maker with a string of domestic hits – relays Poland’s darkest hour with enough nuance and peril to stop Kurier from being outright jingoism. His fluid direction ensures Nowak-Jeziorański’s infiltration – via a parachute drop from Brindisi, with a couple of SS-dodging set pieces en route – never shirks taut genre requirements. But the realpolitik hoops he must jump through en route are equally arresting. Nowak-Jeziorański’s journey, in order not to jeopardise British-Soviet relations, has to remain so clandestine that the resistance leader, Bór-Komorowski, initially refuses to see him. Once he is through the door, he has to persuade the rebels to disobey their historical instincts and buddy up with a Soviet war machine already sizing the country up.

Perhaps Nowak-Jeziorański is such a prominent war hero in Poland that Pasikowski didn’t think it was necessary to spend much time on his inner character. Beyond a certain klutziness – he doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle when told to escape on one – there isn’t much to break Tłokiński’s indomitable facade, or any clue as to which powers his dogged drive. Kurier, though, has a confident, committed sweep; enough to suggest that Pasikowski could capably expand his canvas to war stories outside the Polish purview.

Contributor

Phil Hoad

The GuardianTramp

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