What do you get when Steve Spielberg directs a film from a
screenplay written by the Coen Brothers?
The movie is based on true events, but there are a lot of
liberties taken with the story. Anyone
who knows anything about the Cold War knows about Francis Gary Powers being
shot down in his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union . In that respect this movie may not hold a lot
of suspense for folks. Of course, if you
don’t know history then what happens to him will be new to you. What was new to me was the story of the other
spy involved in things and the third man who became central to the outcome.
We first meet James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) as a scumbag
lawyer representing an insurance company that has denied claims against one of
its customers. We see that he can argue
the most ridiculous concept (hitting five separate motorcyclists is only one
accident so there should only be one claim against the company, not five) with
a straight face.
We also see Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance – Oscar
nominated for Best Supporting Actor) going about his quiet life before the FBI
arrest him. It’s never explained in the
movie what secrets he’s passing on to the Soviets, but we are shown that he is
truly a spy.
Donovan is asked by his law firm to represent Abel to show
that America
will give a valid defense even to its enemies.
Apparently they figure that if Donovan has no compunctions about
representing evil insurance companies then he also won’t balk at representing a
foreign spy. He takes the case, but with
the knowledge that he won’t be liked.
Abel turns out to be about as unemotional and taciturn as
you can get. Donovan explains to him
that if they lose Abel could get the electric chair. After getting no reaction, Donovan observes,
“You don’t seem to be too concerned about that.” And Abel’s response is “Would
it help?” This type of exchange is
repeated a few times during the film.
Despite the lip service about American justice Abel doesn’t
remotely get a fair trial. The judge
denies all of Donovan’s requests for more time to prepare the defense, to
declare evidence obtained illegally as being disallowed, and denying Donovan’s
motions for a mistrial. The one place
Donovan is successful is in getting the judge to not sentence Abel to death,
but instead 30 years in prison.
Donovan appeals eventually to the Supreme Court, going far
beyond what his own law firm wanted him to do.
He becomes a pariah even among his peers, and his family comes under
attack.
This is the first 75 minutes. There have been a few scenes of Powers
(Austin Stowell) training for his missions, but the last hour of the movie
kicks off with Powers getting shot down.
He receives a ten year sentence from the Soviets.
Of course, the U.S. wants to get Powers back and
the U.S.S.R. wants to get Abel back, but they can’t be seen to be openly
exchanging spies. The CIA approaches
Donovan about brokering the deal to swap these two extremely high profile people. As presented in the movie he’s an insurance
lawyer who got an unusual criminal case, tried it anyway, and now out of
nowhere is being asked to broker a deal between powerful enemy nations during
the height of the Cold War, with no official sanction from the U.S. government. And he in essence responds, “No problem”.
It comes across very incongruous. I found out afterwards that in real life he
had been the General Counsel for the OSS
– the precursor to the CIA – and that he was used to moving about in the world
of spies and spy craft.
Donovan runs into issues in East Berlin (where the swap is
supposed to occur) because the Berlin Wall has just gone up and an American
student was grabbed by the German Democratic Republic (aka GDR aka East Germany )
for being a spy. The Soviets want to exchange
Powers for Abel, but the GDR wants to be a player on the world stage and so
they want to swap this student for Abel, to then be able to hand him over to
the Soviets. Once Donovan learns about
the student, he wants to get both Americans back, despite the CIA not caring in
the slightest about the student.
Hanks does a decent job in the role, especially in being
able to sell some of his character’s arguments that at first glance would seem
outrageous. The nominated Rylance does
quite a good job in his role. I don’t
know if that’s how the real Abel was, but it works for this film. In looking at Rylance’s resume on IMDB I have
seen him in smallish roles in a couple of other films, but I didn’t remember
him. He’s more of a stage actor than a
movie actor and he’s won three Tony Awards.
Other than Alan Alda in a small role as Donovan’s boss, and
Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife, there are not really any other familiar faces in
the cast. There is a bit of stunt
casting, though. Eve Hewson plays
Donovan’s oldest daughter. She’s an
Irish actress who has been in a few films, but there is certainly no reason to
go all the way to Ireland
to cast a young actress to play an American daughter who has maybe 10 lines of
dialogue in the movie. So why did
they? She also happens to be the
daughter of Bono. Yes, as in the lead
singer of U2. So they cast Bono’s
daughter for a movie involving the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane.
Overall, Bridge
of Spies
I liked this movie more than I was expecting. It is slightly slow in a couple places, but
it didn’t feel like a more than 2 hour long movie. I read that this is Spielberg’s lowest
grossing film since Munich
(2005) – another movie about period global politics. Obviously, if that subject holds no interest
for you then you may want to skip this movie, but for everyone else I highly
recommend it.
Chip’s Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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