“Bridge of Spies” Spielberg as his best, with Tom Hanks stolid and sure

by Sam

 “Bridge of Spies” is movie making at its heights with Steven Spielberg directing and Tom Hanks as the leading actor. It’s a tense Cold War thriller about the exchange of a Soviet spy caught in America for a U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot shot down on an aerial spy mission over the East Germany. It’s rich in Cold War Incidents as well as solid characterization.

As expected, Hanks delivers a terse portrait of an insurance salesman dragooned in defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, who creates a marvelous picture of a captured spy who will never surrender; he may well be the best actor in the film. PBS TV fans may remember him for his brilliant performance in “Wolf Hall,” whee he played Thomas Cromwell.).

Film starts out with a long sequence during which Abel paints a picture, receives a phone call during which he does not speak. He goes to a park and retrieves a nickel which contains a secret message for him. 

The FBI raids his dingy apartment then but he covers up the secret message depriving the court of direct evidence of his spying, but he is taken prisoner anyhow.

Meanwhile, a insurance lawyer named Donovan (Tom Hanks) is pressured by his law firm to take over as Abel’s defense at that to 30 years so that Abel can be used later in a switch with the Soviets.

Meanwhile, four pilots are selected as those to fly the mystery U-2 spy plane over the Soviet bloc. In the only computer generated scene in the film, the U-2 is shot down, and the pilot Francis Gary Powers despite instructions to take poison lives. (Personal note: I worked on the U-2 missions long ago while in the Air Force as a photo-recon officer. We just looked at the 9-by18-inch pictures. Just following orders.)

Hanks talks Abel into going along with the prisoner swap (although he says when the East bloc takes him “they will shoot me).

Many complications as Hanks waits around for all the pieces to be put together for the exchange, including an East German official in casual clothes takes him for a ride in a fancy Volvo P1800 sports car. That was status supreme in East Germany and it was back in the days before Volvo switched to puffy sedans.

Things get murky as tine for the exchange on a snowy bridge with both sides lined up with snipers ready in case anything goes wrong. The swap is made and Hanks goes home to collapse on a bed before talking to his family.

Director Spielberg is a master at creating doubts about who is right and who is lying. He also inserts enough scenes from Cold War days to send chills down the back, including a nuke bomb test towering mushroom cloud, something  most of us have buried in the past. Spielberg seems to be telling us that it wasn’t all black and white in  those Cold War horrors. And a treat: Alan Alda shows up as a CIA type. Nice to see him again and a reminder of “M*A*S*H” days.

Director Stephen Spielberg

Writers

Matt Charman

 Ethan Coen

Joel Coen

Cast 

                TomHanks as James B. Donovan

  • Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel

• Amy Ryan as Mary McKenna Donovan 

• Alan Alda as Thomas Watters

• Austin Stowell as Francis Gary Powersel

• Scott Shepherd as Hoffman

• Jesse Plemons as Murphy

• Domenick Lombardozzi as Agent Blasct

        • Eve Hewson as Carol Donovan

• Michael Gaston as Williams

• Peter McRobbie as Allen Dulles

• Stephen Kunken as William Tompkins

• Joshua Harto as Bates

• Billy Magnussen as Doug Forrester

• Mark Zak as Soviet Judge

• Edward James Hyland as Chief Justice Earl Warren

• Marko Caka as Reporter

• John Ohkuma as FBI Agent

•