Movie Review: 'Bridge of Spies'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The metaphorical bridge between East and West is one of two crossed by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in their new Cold War drama.
The other one is real.
Bridge of Spies is a thoroughly absorbing docudrama, a period piece about a tense, critical, politically charged prisoner exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated by a reluctant, patriotic civilian – an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances who proves to be extraordinary.
Hanks stars as James Donovan, an unassuming American insurance attorney who is called upon by the government to represent apprehended and accused British-born Russian spy Rudolf Abel, played by Mark Rylance. It's a case Donovan cannot win that will have just about everyone he knows or meets questioning his loyalties.
But he agrees to it because he firmly believes that everyone – everyone -- deserves a fair shake from the American justice system.
Predictably, he loses the case, then convinces the judge to imprison rather than execute Abel – seeing him not as a traitor but as a foreign soldier doing the job he was assigned – just in case the U.S. might be able to use him as a bargaining chip.
Which is exactly what happens.
Next, Donovan is asked to negotiate the exchange of Donovan for two Americans in custody: U-2 Air Force spy pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose surveillance plane has been shot down and is imprisoned in Russia, and an arrested college student named Frederic Pryor, who is studying economics in Berlin.
The exchange is to take place on the Glienicke Bridge in occupied East Berlin in 1962, not long after the construction of the Berlin Wall.
Spielberg (Schindler's List, Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Munich, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Amistad, Lincoln), collaborating with Hanks for a fourth time (Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can), offers a muted melodrama that ratchets up the suspense without resorting to generic action flourishes.
The diplomacy-celebrating screenplay by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen is remarkably clear, taking the liberty of condensing the timeline but smoothly incorporating lots of detailed exposition into an accessible narrative that translates its inherent complexity into a tense, telling tale.
If Hanks is this era's Jimmy Stewart, then this is Spielberg's Mr. Hanks Goes to Berlin, offered as a third cousin of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Hanks lends his principled, can-do persona to the real-life protagonist, while Rylance provides a sly, witty reading of Abel. Their improbable friendship, based on mutual respect, provides the film's modest but touching emotional underpinning.
So we'll exchange 3 stars out of 4 for Bridge of Spies. Spielberg and Hanks look back at espionage, diplomacy, and negotiation in a different era, find it preferable to what we expect now, and cross that bridge when they come to it.
