Rating: A
“Bridge of Spies” earns the three-word description “audience satisfaction guaranteed.” The film screams mainstream entertainment with its exploration of America as the place that out-negotiates Communist countries and gives even a Soviet spy a fair trial. Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg (“Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan”) manages to turn the Cold War into a “feel good” movie, but his dramatization of this tense period of American history has plenty of moral undertones to add pleasant layers of depth to the film.
“Bridge of Spies” marks the fourth collaboration for Spielberg and Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”) and is completed with a script by Oscar-winning screenwriters the Coen brothers (“Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men”), which should be satisfaction enough for audiences to trust the execution of this film.
Given his filmmaking history, Spielberg’s newest project unsurprisingly tackles humanistic issues while using war as the backdrop. However, the battle around which “Bridge of Spies” centers is much different than those seen in “War Horse” and “Saving Private Ryan.” The United States of the ‘60s is engaged in an information war with the Soviet Union. Trust is hard to come by, and the fear of nuclear weapons is looming over both countries.
The film opens in a small, grungy apartment, where Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is painting a self-portrait. The expertly directed “chase” sequence that follows is easily forgotten after experiencing the excitement of the rest of the movie, but it evokes an eerie feeling of violation from the presence of spies brought to our turf that should not be forgotten.
This Cold War drama is based on the life of James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), a straight-arrow American lawyer whom the government approaches with an inglorious request. Washington wants Donovan to be the defense lawyer for the now-captured Rudolf Abel. America is supposed to give every person a right to a fair trail, but given the time period and situation, it only wants the semblance of this right for Abel because national security is at stake.
Donovan refuses to be a governmental puppet, however; he determinedly does his duty to his country as a lawyer and fights for the Constitution to be upheld. He insists that the judge see that if the United States executes a Russian on American soil, facing repercussions from the Soviet Union might be far worse than those of the American public if Abel is imprisoned. While his actions are honorable, Donovan’s defense of Abel makes him the most hated man in America, which quickly escalates to his and his family’s receiving hate mail and death threats.
Throughout the film, Donovan asks Abel with the deep concern, “Aren’t you worried?”— to which Abel quizzically responds “Would it help?” The cool nature of Abel always seemed to reaffirm Donovan in his purpose and illustrate the deep connection between these two characters and the chemistry between the actors.
The virtuous character of James Donovan provides Hanks with the perfect opportunity to tap into his “Catch Me if You Can” acting notes and deliver a powerful and thought-provoking performance. This type of character takes talent to portray, but its frequent appearance in Hollywood only complements the unique, memorable character of Rudolf Abel. Mark Rylance’s performance as the calm, philosophical spy from Russia with a British accent who was more concerned with his artwork than his pending execution, stole the show.
The climax of the movie is the negotiation of the prisoner exchange of Abel for U.S. pilot Gary Powers (Austin Stowell). Russia and the U.S. are forced to find a way to agree on something and who better to handle these negotiations than Donovan himself. To make the task even more daunting, Donovan must travel to the Russian Embassy in East Berlin to make the deal, where the Soviet Union and Berlin were engaged in a battle of their own. The agonizingly tense negotiations that took place show the intense lack of trust between the nations, as these men seemed to calculate and recalculate how much information the each country knew about the other.
When Donovan finds out about the wrongful German imprisonment of American student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), he goes against the CIA’s wishes and insists on a two-for-one prisoner exchange, or the U.S. will make no deal at all. Objections of the unfairness of this trade are raised from both the German Democratic Republic and Russia, but even spending time in a German prison doesn’t dissuade Donovan from his mission. The following dawn the tension is thick on the so-called “Bridge of Spies,” designated as the place for the prisoner exchange, and the platform where these three countries will finally see if they can trust each other or if patriotism will lead only to betrayal.
