Tom Hanks Shines As Key Facilitator In 'Bridge of Spies'

BRIDGE OF SPIES
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Historical Drama
Starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda
Distributed by: Touchstone Pictures (North America), 20th Century Fox (International)
Release Date: October 16, 2015
My Rating: 7.5/10

Legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg is back as both Director and Producer of yet another 20th-century war drama. Although this film does not take place during World War II like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Flags of Our Fathers, or Letters from Iwo Jima, this film is set in 1957 during the height of the Cold War, which arose in large part due to the aftermath of the Second World War.

Two-time Academy-Award-winner Tom Hanks stars as Jim Donovan, an insurance lawyer from Brooklyn who is tasked with the highly controversial task of defending Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a Soviet spy, who is also a British Citizen, who has just been arrested in New York after FBI agents storm his apartment and find evidence of his illicit activities.

Many American officials and even civilians fear Abel may be a KGB spy, but work hard to ensure his trial is fair so as to avoid another reason for escalating tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.
As one might expect during that time, Donovan quickly becomes despised by the American public, and he and his family slowly become threatened. The lawyer remains persistent, and continues his attempts to convince the courts to give Abel 30 years imprisonment rather than a direct death sentence, but fails.

Meanwhile, a young pilot named Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down from his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union, where he is captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Another young American, an economics graduate exchange student named Frederic Pryor who is working on his dissertation in East Germany, is also detained and held hostage shortly afterwards following a visit to his German girlfriend in East Berlin just as the Berlin Wall is being constructed. Thus, Donovan attempts to negotiate a 2-for-1 trade with the USSR: Abel for both Powers and Pryor. The USSR only agrees to return Powers, which prompts Donovan to fight till the bitter end until both him and Pryor are home safe.

Bridge of Spies is certainly a very well-shot war thriller, with both dreary, grey shades during the winter in present-day Russia and brightly-colored outfits that bring the 1950s completely to life (especially in the case of Donovan's wife and daughter, played by Amy Ryan and Bono's real-life daughter Eve Hewson). The tensions between the two major superpower nations are vividly depicted-despite the occasional comic relief in one-on-one conversation scenes-and the display of people illegally jumping over the Berlin Wall at night fresh off its construction, only to be shot by Soviet/East German police, are shocking.

Tom Hanks delivers his usual outstanding performance of a man who is nothing short of perseverant, albiet fierce opposition from his own compatriots. Support from a strong cast and a well-penned script from the Coen Brothers and Matt Charman help to round off a story that in the end truly does demonstrate how drastically differently both nations operated during this tumultuous Cold War. The fact that Donovan is ultimately granted the majority of the credit for the exchange, while Abel does not even remotely appear to be welcomed back to his homeland with open arms. Likewise, Powers is depicted as undergoing through much more violent interrogation sessions from the Soviets than Abel is by the Americans: bias? Probably. Donovan is revealed to have also played a large role in negotiating the exchange of prisoners during the Bay of Pigs Invasion just a few years later in 1962, which may be another reason why he is so revered in this film.

The film is rather long, with a total running time of 2 hours and 21 minutes, and the negotiations do seem to drag on for the latter half of the story, and the ending is more anti-climactic than some may like, so although you might leave the theater disappointed in this regard just remember that you were warned.

I hope to see more of Mr. Spielberg's work in the coming years, whether it take the form of another war drama or a more sci-fi/adventure blockbuster that recalls old classics like the beloved Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park franchises.