Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows Shop News Showtimes

Courier (Kurer)

1988 List
Reviews 94% Audience Score 100+ Ratings Read More Read Less

Audience Reviews

View All (3) audience reviews
Audience Member The end of Communist start here Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Audience Member While the music and fashion seem heavily dated (not even to mention the film quality), the Soviet black-comedy "The Courier" was way ahead of it's times in a lot of ways. America has fallen in love with the skinny, identity-crisis stricken white-guy (see: Wristcutters: A Love Story, Garden State, etc.), but "The Courier" is one of the earliest (and better) examples I can find. Main character Ivan is a compulsively lying high-school grad who finds himself battling nihilism while trying to figure out how to express his feelings. Working as a courier, the film follows Ivan's adventures courting a college girl, keeping his own lies straight, and finding balance for himself. It all sounds cheesy after dozens of "indie" films today, but the film is earnest in ways the modern "indie flicks" try and fail to pull off. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member This ranks up there with Osennij Marafon (Autumn Marathon) in my (limited) exposure to Soviet comedies. Dunayevsky is superb as the apparently directionless, sarcastic, yet sweet Ivan. As is apparently common in this genre, the film veers from laugh-out-loud hilarious to absurd to gloomy (though not as dark as something like Rebro Adama [Adam's Rib] or Malenkaya Vera [Little Vera], also from the same period.) It is also a fascinating glimpse of youth culture in the perestroika period, and confronts some interesting questions about the relationship between the generations. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Courier (Kurer)

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Director
Karen Shakhnazarov