BRIDGE OF SPIES
Touchstone Pictures
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: A
Director:  Steven Spielberg
Written by:  Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, John Scott Shepherd, Amy Ryan, Sebastian Koch, Alan Alda
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 10/12/15
Opens:  October 16, 2015

You don’t have to be a fan of John Le Carré’s spy novels to realize that cloak-and-dagger shows are not the property of just one side.  At this very moment, there are doubtless Iranian spies in the U.S. and American spies in Iran, and in fact the Iranians are currently interested in exchanging Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian for some folks being held in the U.S. for violating sanctions.  Certainly, during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it’s almost common sense to realize that both countries had agents picking up information from their enemies.  Yet, Americans depicted in Steven Spielberg’s phenomenal “Bridge of Spies,” when told that a Colonel Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) was arrested on strong evidence that he had acted as a Soviet agent in America, hate Abel but also detest the American lawyer defending the guy just as much.  Some of our own people, then, had been so blinded by nationalism that they must have thought that our side would never do something dastardly like spying even on our Soviet enemy.  Even more, the Americans who throw dirty looks at Brooklyn insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) for serving pro bono to defend him, must not have realized that what makes our country different from the Soviet Union is possession of a constitution that our government takes seriously.  The phrase “due process of law,” perhaps the four most important words in that document, means that everyone no matter how scuzzy is entitled to a fair trial with an attorney committed to his client.  (Note also that when Israel tried Adolf Eichmann, one of the most infamous perpetrators of Germany’s “final solution,” Eichmann had a German attorney with a free hand to keep his client from the hangman’s noose.)

“Bridge of Spies,” graced by America’s greatest film director and with the Coen brothers as writers (along with Matt Charman), could hardly be anything but among the best American movies of 2015.  This virtually flawless piece, filled with terrific performances, a strong and serious script with surprising comic touches, a production design that transforms parts of New York City and Berlin into the early 1960s (“Spartacus” was the film du jour on the theater marquee), and superb editing that neatly separates the domestic arrest-and-trial scenes with those involving international negotiations in Germany, manages to be both full of suspense and a feel-good story with lightly sentimental touches.  These qualities make the two hours and twenty-one minutes slide by and make you wish for more.

The story deals with agents from the two great powers whose aims are to secure information about the enemy.  Col. Rudolf Abel worked in Brooklyn Heights and made drops of gleaned information to his colleagues in Prospect Park.  Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) , who retired from the U.S. Air Force as a captain, joined the CIA’s U2 program, assigned to gather information by flying a plane that could fly 70,000 feet high and snap pictures with giant cameras.  At about the time that Abel was picked up in Brooklyn in a working space in which he painted portraits, Powers was shot down over Russia where he ignored or was unable to carry out orders to destroy the plane or to commit suicide when captured.  Both men would be destined for use as pawns, to be traded for each other.  James B. Donovan—who in 1964 co-wrote a book Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers, which has recently come out as a paperback—is recruited by the CIA to defend Abel to show the world that the U.S. abides by due process.  After securing the trust of the Soviet spy, he does his best to defend the man, but a hanging judge, comically portrayed by Dakin Matthews, sounds more like a prosecutor wanting to find the man guilty in as short a time as possible.

In an action that begins unrelated, the East Germans arrest and imprison Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), a young American Ph.D. student, picked up on the wrong side of the just-built Berlin wall.  Against orders, James B. Donovan becomes determined to negotiate the release of both Powers and Pryor, two-for-one, threatening the East German officials that if the student is not released, neither will Abel, and that Abel would probably “talk” if convinced that he would be spending his life in the U.S.

Mark Rylance, a fifty-five year old actor considered one of the greatest of his British generation, is transformed into a dorky, balding spy, virtually without emotion, not concerned that he might be sentenced to death.  His favorite expression more or less imitates that of Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?”  He gets to trust Donovan, who had been chosen to perform a role similar to that of Jimmy Carter’s in more modern times, because Donovan did not represent the U.S. government but only himself as a private citizen.  You wonder why Abel is even willing to return to his Motherland given his warm relationship with the insurance lawyer.  Tom Hanks can do no wrong.  We believe his character as a man who starts out of his depths, from defending an insurance company against one client who wanted five times the damages to which he is entitled, to helping an obvious Soviet spy who is certainly no traitor but who, like Powers, is loyal to his own country.

In an intense but often comic drama, there is one spectacular action shot: that of Powers’ U2 plane as it is shot down over the Soviet Union, catapulting in flames toward the earth with a parachuting Air Force officer following on its tail.  There is nary a wasted moment in the entire drama, the most suspenseful segment filmed over the Glienicki Bridge over the Havel River connecting the Wannsee district of Berlin with the Brandenburg capital Potsman, as prisoners are being exchanged, snipers at the ready on both sides.  Tom Hanks makes us in the audience more concerned about Abel’s fate than that of Powers and Pryor, a testament to his ability as one of America’s great film actors.  And he, together with Mark Rylance, helps to make “Bridge of Spies” the picture to see this year.

Rated PG-13.  141 minutes.  © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – A
Acting – A
Technical – A
Overall – A