Susan Granger’s review of “Bridge of Spies” (DreamWorks/Disney/Fox)
Master filmmaker Steven Spielberg is fascinated with exploring history: “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Munich,” “Amistad,” and “Lincoln.” Now, “Bridge of Spies”…
In New York City in the 1950s, at the height of the simmering Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, painter Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is captured and accused of being a Russian spy.
Summoned by his boss (Alan Alda), insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is told to represent Abel. A former prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials, Donovan’s known as a wily, pragmatic mediator.
Reluctant at first, Donovan is, nevertheless, determined to defend his client, insisting on “due process of law,” even when the presiding judge and the American public have deemed Abel guilty, and Donovan’s wife (Amy Ryan) and family are harassed in their Brooklyn home.
Sometime later, U.S. Air Force pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down over Soviet airspace. Both men possess sensitive information, becoming pawns, traded by their respective nations.
So CIA director Allen Dulles (Peter McRobbie) directs Donovan to fly to Berlin to broker the covert, danger-fraught deal, which is further complicated by the arrest of a young American student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), detained in the Eastern sector behind the newly-erected Wall.
Co-scripted by Ethan & Joel Coen with Matt Charman, based on Donovan’s “Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers” (1964), Spielberg creates an intensely suspenseful saga, culminating on the Glienicki Bridge over the Havel River.
As usual, Spielberg surrounds himself with the most talented actors and crew. Tom Hanks is flawless as a steadfast, idealistic, yet canny negotiator with a dry sense of humor, while Mark Rylance impresses with commanding finesse and ironic discretion.
Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski dazzles with a sequence of Powers ejecting from his U-2 surveillance plane, viewing its destruction through his parachute. Augmenting the dark subterfuge are Adam Stockhausen’s production design and Thomas Newman’s score.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bridge of Spies” is an enthralling 10, an espionage thriller with contemporary relevance.
