Bridge of Spies (2015) review

What can be said about Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks that hasn’t been said before? They’re two of the biggest and most beloved names in the film industry and in 1998, the two teamed up for the first time for that year’s highly acclaimed war drama, ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Since then, Hanks has starred in two other Spielberg films, 2002’s ‘Catch Me if You Can’ and 2004’s ‘The Terminal’, and the two of them also co-produced a pair of WWII-set HBO miniseries in 2001’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and 2010’s ‘The Pacific’. One whole decade after their last film collaboration ‘The Terminal’, Hanks and Spielberg re-unite again on the big screen in the latter’s latest directorial effort, ‘Bridge of Spies’. Co-written by another famous duo, the Coen Brothers, ‘Bridge of Spies’ sees the duo of Hanks and Spielberg take on a different war; the Cold War. This film tells the true story of the 1960 U-2 incident in which lawyer James B. Donovan negotiated the prisoner exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and Soviet spy Rudolf Abel after he had previously defended the latter in court and, most importantly, kept him from getting a death sentence. And ultimately while the film can be a bit dry at times, there’s still no denying the masterclass effort that comes from Spielberg’s direction, the performances of its two main leads, and this film’s excellent representation of what life was like during the Cold War.

The year is 1957 with both the U.S. and Russia firmly locked into the paranoia of the Cold War as each anticipate/fear a potential nuclear attack from either side. In Brooklyn, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested by police on the charge of being a Soviet spy. With the intention of at least giving Abel a fair trial so that it won’t come across as some sort of Soviet propaganda, insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is tasked with being Abel’s lawyer in court. Despite the clear fact that Abel will be convicted as well as the backlash that he ends up facing from the American people for defending Abel in court, Donovan takes on the case and while he ultimately does lose it, he manages to convince the Judge to lower Abel’s sentence from a death sentence so that he could one day be useful in the case that the U.S. needs to bargain with the Soviet Union. Sure enough, that day comes when pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) gets shot down in the Soviet Union while undertaking a reconnaissance mission for the CIA. This results in Donovan being sent to East Berlin as a ‘neutral negotiator’ in a prisoner exchange involving Powers and Abel, which gets a bit more complicated when another American, student Frederic Pryor, also gets captured, in this case by East Germany in the midst of the construction of the Berlin Wall, on spy charges.

Watching this film, there’s no denying the strength of Spielberg’s direction; how he constructs his scenes and how they are paced. Everything that you can normally expect from a Spielberg film is here from the excellent cinematography by Spielberg regular Janusz Kaminski to a majestic score which in this case was not done by Spielberg’s go-to composer John Williams but by Thomas Newman instead. Spielberg also really excels in establishing the ‘Cold War’ atmosphere and the paranoia that came from both sides of this conflict, especially in the U.S. as shown through how Donovan is initially viewed as a social pariah amongst his fellow citizens for defending a ‘traitor’ in court. All of this, for the most part, makes up for the film’s primary issue and that is that it admittedly drags at times and other times can come off a bit dry. Now obviously because this takes place in the Cold War, the film is more focused on politics than it is about the action. For the record, this film does manage to be engaging from beginning to end, primarily due to its strong morals as displayed by Donovan, but ultimately for what’s classified a thriller, there’s not that much tension because we know what’s going to happen and Donovan is never in any real danger. That and, even for a film that’s 141 minutes long, it has to cover quite a lot of ground. It’s basically two stories in one; Donovan’s defense of Abel in court and his subsequent negotiations to get back Powers and Pryor.

Tom Hanks is, well, Tom Hanks. He’s practically a national treasure at this point. You know that he’s going to be good no matter what, especially in a Spielberg film, and of course he’s excellent here as the Atticus Finch-esque Donovan. In a country that, at the time, was broiled in the politics of the Cold War, Donovan worked to preserve the ideals of the Constitution (AKA ‘The Rulebook’ as he illustrates in a scene in which he’s talking with a member of the CIA) even during a case he clearly wasn’t going to win. Donovan may not be a particularly deep lead character but Hanks imbues him with the everyman quality that he is so great at doing, making him very likable through and through. Hanks is backed up by a solid supporting cast that also includes Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife and Alan Alda as his legal partner Thomas Watters but the biggest standout of the film ends up being Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel. Rylance plays the role with a quiet thoughtfulness and, in a way, a bit of an unsuspecting nature as Abel is only once shown to do anything spy-related. Like Donovan, Abel stays true to his morals as he refuses to become an ally of the United States government even though that would help him get out of his current predicament as a prisoner of the United States. I can definitely see why Spielberg casted Rylance in the lead role/titular character of his next film, his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG’, because this is easily one of the best performances that I’ve seen this entire year.

I can’t really say that ‘Bridge of Spies’ is one of Spielberg’s best films, even though it’s certainly been getting some of the best reviews of any film that he’s ever directed. The film does do its job in recreating the world of the Cold War as well as the paranoia and fear that came from this part of U.S. history through the eyes of a man who fought to preserve the country’s morals even if it made him an outcast in his home country. It’s just that, even for a film that’s over two and a half hours long, it has to basically cover two stories in that runtime; the case of Rudolf Abel and the prisoner exchange for Francis Gary Powers. And as a result, the film admittedly can be both a bit dry and a bit overlong at times and there’s not as much tension as it wants to have. But at the end of the day, this is still a Steven Spielberg film and you can always expect a well-crafted and well-directed effort whenever he’s behind the camera. As some of you might have guessed from an earlier analogy that I made, the story of James B. Donovan and Rudolf Abel reminded me of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Donovan is basically this story’s ‘Atticus Finch’ as both display the same morals from a political and human standpoint. So in short, while I can’t really list this as one of my favorite films of this year, ‘Bridge of Spies’ definitely delivers when it comes to being the kind of film that you’d expect to see from Steven Spielberg.

Rating: 4/5