Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies recounts the fascinating story of James B. Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer entrusted with a clandestine mission to negotiate the release of U-2 spy pilot Gary Powers. When Powers is shot down over Soviet Russia, the CIA enlists Donavan to help secure the airman’s return by exchanging Powers for a captive KGB spy named Rudolf Abel, who Donovan defended during a trial put on mostly for show.  The film is a solid, old-fashioned Cold War dramatic thriller—the kind Hollywood no longer makes unless someone of Spielberg’s caliber is directing.  The cast, featuring Tom Hanks as Donovan and Mark Rylance as Abel, is solid across the board, and the screenplay by Matt Charman and Joel & Ethan Coen is elegantly constructed, easy to follow, and snappily entertaining.

Despite this, the film plays smaller and simpler than the epic adventure this true story cries out for. Call it “reverse Argo syndrome,” but I found myself wishing the filmmakers had taken a few more artistic liberties in putting the story across as a piece of cinematic historical fiction. Not that the Coens (in their first collaboration with Spielberg) don’t have a lot of fun with spy movie conventions (the genre is another first for them, I believe), but everything in this complex narrative unfolds a little too linearly.  Bridge of Spies is also probably the least visually exciting Spielberg movie I can think of.  Far too much of the dialogue-heavy picture is covered in generic angles and by-the-numbers cutting. The spellbinding compositions and long, beautifully orchestrated takes we associate with this director are curiously absent, though his sentimental button pushing is still present—even without his composer-in-residence John Williams.  Still, this modest movie is a satisfying and welcome change of pace from the type of pretentious prestige pictures that usually start rolling out around this time. I doubt Bridge of Spies will garner many Oscar nominations, but that’s no knock against it.

NOTE: I was wrong in this prediction and the film nabbed Six nominations including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor.