Steven Spielberg. Tom Hanks. The Cold War. Sounds like the proper ingredients to turn an interesting sliver of history into a compelling motion picture, right? While, not without its bright spots, the pleasures of Bridge of Spies are milder than you would expect, the thrills more low key. A disappointing entry into Spielberg's filmography.
The movie opens in 1957, with the capture of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel by the FBI. Played with quiet dignity and a dash of wit by Mark Rylance, Abel is to be paraded in front of the press and given the full benefit of American due process. Or, at least, the appearance of it. That's how attorney James B. Donovan enters the picture. An ex-military man, Donovan assisted in the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials before settling into a partnership at a New York firm. Naturally, Hanks plays the attorney; and if you equate him to a modern-day James Stewart, this would be a cross between the naive idealist in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the confident intellectual in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope.
During his preparation of the case, Donovan encounters resistance from everyone -- his family, his firm, the public at large -- except the person he expected it from most: Abel, himself. The developing respect between these men and the chemistry between the actors who portray them, is unquestionably the strongest aspect of the film's first half. But, there's a lot going on, and there are important ideas at play, and it feels surprisingly un-engaging. Lots of conflict and no tension.
The second half of the film fares better, moving from New York to Berlin in 1961, where Donovan attempts to secure a deal to swap Abel for Gary Powers, the pilot of a downed U-2 spy plane. The change in setting from high-rises and courtrooms to checkpoints and post-war rubble certainly lends itself to greater suspense. Limited support from the agency and no official backing from the government places Donovan out on a limb, sniffling and sneezing his way through back-channel negotiations with the Soviets. Complicating matters are the East Germans, using a captured American student as a bargaining chip to get Abel for themselves, something the agency doesn't care about, but Donovan is unwilling to ignore.
Spielberg and his screenwriters, Matt Charman and Joel & Ethan Coen, skip along the surface, cover lots of ground, but rarely dig into anything substantial. They also take time away from the main story to include scenes of America's U-2 spy missions, specifically, the recruitment of Powers, his crash over the Soviet Union, his trial, and subsequent interrogations. For some, the U-2 crash will inject a welcome burst of energy at the film's midpoint, but the rest of Powers' scenes lack punch and feel like filler.
Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski might approach the backlighting of some scenes with too much zeal, but the technical brilliance we've come to expect from a Spielberg production is intact. Notably, long-time collaborator John Williams was unable to score the picture, with Thomas Newman filling in admirably. The film might miss Williams' panache, but I wouldn't cite it as the reason why Bridge of Spies is a slightly ho-hum affair.
