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Scripted by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, Bridge Of Spies is an espionage thriller that pits a mild-mannered insurance lawyer against the bureaucratic might of the USSR and Germany during the Cold War.
Indeed, at one point in Bridge of Spies we see school classes transfixed in terror at those eerie fifties government information films about nuclear attack – houses are blown away, trees bend and snap and citizens are urged to crouch and duck.
Whenever Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks combine forces, the outcome is impressive.
The movie suggests that Donovan suffered a campaign of hostility for his principled stance, including rejection by his lawyer partners and shots fired through his window, but other sources suggest that these incidents were invented, and that while his family experienced some criticism, including angry letters and middle-of-the-night phone calls, many respected his commitment to standing up for American freedoms, such as the right to a fair trial.
The story then switches between the Donovan-Abel plot, and one focussing on the CIA’s spy mission in the Soviet Union which culminates in the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane and the capture of pilot Francis Gary Powers. At a time when a new Cold War is setting in, this true-life tale certainly resonates but the message is spoon-fed and rather too sweet. But the film really belongs to Tom Hanks who is just outstanding.
But Rylance absolutely stands toe-to-toe with him in the supporting stakes.
In addition, Spielberg packs-out the cast with terrific character actors, from Alan Alda (as Donovan’s boss) to Sebastian Koch (as shifty East German lawyer Vogel) and Burghart Klaussner as a high-ranking Russian apparatchik, though poor old Amy Ryan is largely wasted in a thankless role as Donovan’s wife, fobbed off with the lie that her husband is on a fishing trip in London. Donovan successfully negotiated his return, along with an American student arrested in Berlin, in exchange for returning Abel to Russian Federation.
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Stockhausen won an Oscar previous year for his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel, and while that film looked back to a simpler time by creating a historical dollhouse out of a fictional republic, Spielberg has roped him in to create another impassioned nostalgia piece that’s conversely very grounded in historical reality, in all of its grimness. It’s grimly realistic, it’s palpably chilly and as in the American passages, it’s impeccably well shot, designed and edited. Still, if that makes it sound heavier than it actually is, rest assured that Spielberg strikes a tonal balance that makes it an enjoyable and accessible watch, even with all of its grown-up themes. You can chart Donovan’s arc based on just those three scenes – where he is and how he changes in between them- and the third and final scene is the best of all of them.
