Film on Friday; Bridge of Spies

Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks are two of my favourite actors, and for almost the same reason. They're both ordinary people, and give off the feeling that if you met them in real life they'd be very nice (indeed, Tom Hanks gatecrashed a lady's wedding photos in Central Park while running; he stopped, wished the couple well, asked them their names and had lovely words to say, then posed as they had their official photograph with him before.... and this is the beautifully Him thing.... pulling out his own camera and asking, "Can I have a selfie with you folks? My wife won't believe this!")

They also don't over act. They know how to do nuanced, measured performances using every part of their face. And that ability gets used and used well in Bridge of Spies. With Mark Rylance as a Russian spy, Rudolf Abel and Tom Hanks as the civilian American lawyer James B Donovan who is drafted in to act as an independent emissary to negotiate the release of Gary Powers.

Written in parts surprisingly by the Coen brothers of Fargo and Burn After Reading fame, Bridge of Spies is a good-old-fashioned spy/legal thriller and drama. It garnered a truckload of positive reviews when it was released. The Guardian gave it five stars, and praise was given  to the superb direction of Mr Spielberg, the skillful use of compare and contrast and little touches of humour.... the false family who are all tears and concern until the Russian supremo walks in, when they turn, stiff backed and march off set, their role complete.


The plot is a true story, based on the real life handover of Gary Powers and Rudolf Abel, an American and a Russian respectively, during the real Cold War of the 1960's. You can read the Wikipedia entry for Bridge of Spies here, and people of my mother's generation remember it quite well. It must have been a tense, horrid, fearful time, with two great super powers lining up against each other and playing My Bomb's Bigger than Your Bomb. It's not a 'normal' spy thriller, no John Le Carre but subtle and well plotted. The pacing is good as well, and at no point does it feel like they are rushing on to finish.

Bridge of Spies captures the atmosphere well. It's filmed in murky grey tones that give the whole East Berlin a dingy, dirty post-war feel. Of course, there's a lot of signs of the war. Even 15 years after the end of the war, there are bombed out buildings and the place is less than the Splendid Capital Hitler dreamed of. A particularly gripping moment (in the trailer, so no spoilers here,) is when Donovan is travelling on the S-Bahn over the wall and witnesses a shooting by the East German police of someone trying to cross. I never saw Berlin divided but I did, in 1979, see the border between East and west Germany. It was not a welcoming sight, and the feeling of being watched and, worse still, of being watched by people prepared to kill, was not nice.

We watched the film as a family minus Sarah, who was out at a party. It was good enough to keep the teenage boys occupied. James being, as ever, pleased to watch a fellow James as hero, was most struck by the facts at the end. James B Donovan later went on to be sent to negotiate the release of 1,113 prisoners captured at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. By the time he finished, he had negotiated freedom for 9,000. You can read about James Donovan here.

I would recommend Bridge of Spies if you have enjoyed other legal or spy movies, and don't need it to be action packed. It's no Bourne thriller or Mission Impossible, but rather more like Hunt For Red October.