Action shouldn’t be this complicated, but I spent a majority of the running time for The Courier trying to piece together what was happening and why any of the action was relevant to the storyline. Despite a seemingly straightforward premise, The Courier is ripe with flashbacks and secret identities, not to mention far too many characters and names to keep track of. If only the approach had been simplified, there may have been a great action film in here somewhere. Instead, The Courier is a convoluted thriller with a few scenes of action.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan stars as an underworld courier who finishes the jobs without asking questions. When he is giving a job to deliver a briefcase to a man that is seemingly impossible to find, the reward is as high as the risk. If he succeeds, there is a million dollar payday waiting, but failure will mean the death of his family. The difficulty finding the man in question lies in his underworld connections and the elusive qualities of his personality and reputation. The deeper into the underworld our courier gets in tracking down his target, the less the storyline feels familiar or comprehensible.
The bonus features on the Blu-ray release of The Courier includes a behind-the-scenes featurette as well as extended/deleted scenes from the film. The high definition presentation of the movie is hardly impressive, if only because of how forgettable the film is. This is an interesting failure, but not nearly interesting enough for me to recommend to anyone I respect.
