Bridge of Spies
Genre : Action/Adventure
Year : 2015
Director : Steven Spielberg
Screenplay : Matt Charman, joen and Ethan Coen
Starring : Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance

Superb true cold war spy drama telling the story of James B Donovan, a lawyer given the job of defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

It’s pretty clear that Donovan (Tom Hanks) is given the job simply to go through the motions with Abel apparently doomed to execution, and hated by the American public.

However they have chosen the wrong man in Donovan who is a principled man, and does the best job he can for Abel. Even after he is found guilty, he persuades the judge that he could be useful in some future exchange deal, and thereafter actually appeals on behalf of Abel that he wasn’t treated according to the constitution.

This in turn makes Donavan and his family targets for much hatred. However he is proved correct when American pilot Francis Gary Powers is short down in a spy plane over Soviet territory. Donovan is then asked to act unofficially to negotiate a swap between Abel and Powers.

There’s a complication in that American student Frederic Pryor has been caught on the wrong side of the suddenly-erected Berlin Wall, and while the American authorities aren’t too interested in him, Donovan sets out to try to get a two-for-one deal.

The evocation of the period is superb, especially in the early scenes with Abel’s arrest, the shooting down of Powers’ plane (huge news in the UK at the time) and also in the East German scenes.

With Steven Spielberg directing plus Hanks and Mark Rylance as Abel, it’s bound to be something special and it really is, easily worth the 143 mins running time. Hanks is brilliant and even by remaining almost completely deadpan, so is Rylance. Memorable film.

9 out of 10 -

mike@mikes-movies.co.uk

A COLLECTION OF INDEPENDENT FILM & MOVIE REVIEWS BY MIKE HUNTER
Thanks to David Kinvig for the header cartoon

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