Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies (12A)

USA 2015 141 mins Dir: Steven Spielberg Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Austin Stowell, Sebastian Koch, Alan Alda

Mere seconds into Steven Spielberg’s new movie Bridge of Spies and we’re once again reminded of his formidable ability to convey complex information in the most dynamic visual language possible. The film begins in 1957, the height of the Cold War, when American and Russian thermonuclear tensions were reaching boiling point. In a riveting, near-wordless opening sequence worthy of Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed, we’re introduced to a calm, composed man (played by newly minted British megastar Mark Rylance) who leaves his Brooklyn apartment, is trailed by men in trilby hats through the subway, takes up a spot by the river to do some painting and retrieves something secretive from beneath a park bench.

We’re not sure exactly what is happening but it has the definite whiff of espionage, suspicions confirmed when the man is arrested by the authorities and unveiled as Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Immediately, Spielberg has established both the physical and emotional landscape of his movie: a world of shadows where the battle between two of the world’s great superpowers is not only being played out in the corridors of power but also on the seemingly ordinary streets of New York and elsewhere. It’s a fascinating introduction and one that Spielberg capitalises on in the ensuing drama.

Enter Tom Hanks as insurance lawyer James B. Donovan who is elected by his firm to represent Abel in court. It’s little more than a vanity position, designed to convey a wholesome, all-American message that everyone, even potential traitors, deserves a fair defence. But in the process of defending the unassuming, birdlike Abel, Donovan finds his moral conscience stirring and he decides to take the unprecedented step of calling for the man’s incarceration, as opposed to execution.

With Americans baying for blood and Donovan putting his own reputation and the lives of his family at risk (Amy Ryan sadly underused as his wife Mary), the situation soon attains global significance when American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down and captured by Soviet forces. Donovan finds himself at the centre of the escalating crisis when he is elected to lead a dangerous exchange: Abel for Powers, to be undertaken in the fractious climate of East Berlin where the infamous wall is already beginning to be constructed.

It’s a story in which an escalating global crisis unfolds largely through the point of view of one man, an intersection of the international and the personal that is expertly wrought by Spielberg. The film demonstrates a much more fleet-footed and spry approach than the likes of Munich and Lincoln, largely down to the humane well-spring of star Hanks whose Jimmy Stewart sense of unruffled decency has rarely been more apparent (it’s not only the court room sequences calling to mind Mr Smith Goes to Washington; he also utters George Bailey’s catchphrase ‘hot dog’ at one point). In conjunction with Spielberg, Hanks is our compassionate guide through the moral quagmire of the story, assaying an ordinary, hard-working man who looks to puncture through the political shadows of the Cold War with quintessential decency and humanity.

It’s also leavened by a healthy sense of ironic cynicism, largely due to a Coen Brothers input on Matt Charman’s script. Whether it’s James and Rudolf framed beneath a stark sign warning of ‘No excessive noise’ to a courthouse floor covered in flashbulbs following a press maelstrom, this is a Spielberg movie with an eye on life’s absurdities as well as its more heartening aspects. And even if the initial stretches of the film look somewhat dry and talky, calling to mind Lincoln’s somewhat interminable dialogue scenes (albeit in a different era), the film really picks up when we relocate to East Berlin.

Spielberg’s evocation of this shattered, desolate political wasteland is instantly gripping, again calling to mind Reed’s The Third Man and transforming the movie from political talkie into richly rewarding, suspenseful drama, one where even the most seemingly casual exchange has the potential to either avert or set in motion a catastrophic fallout between two warring countries. And in spite of the chilly, wintry atmosphere that pervades Janusz Kaminski’s vivid cinematography, everything is underpinned by Spielberg’s inimitably warm-hearted outlook. In a film brimming with political divisions and complex dialogue exchanges, the strangely endearing east/west partnership embodied by Hanks and Rylance ultimately sends you out with a smile on your face.