With this movie, Steven Spielberg has once again dramatised a true-to-life cold war spy-swap drama, starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance.
Those brought up on John Le Carré, a British author might perhaps expect from this moral equivalence, pitiful compromise and exhausted emptiness.
However, Spielberg with his gift for uncynicism, uncovers courtesy and moral courage amidst all the Real politic.
Working with an excellent screenplay by up-and-coming British dramatist Matt Charman, a script set up in recognisable places by Joel and Ethan Coen.
On October 16, the fact-based drama tells the story of James Donovan (Hanks), a Brooklyn insurance lawyer who risked his reputation and his family's safety to ensure a fair trial for Rudolf Abel (Rylance), a Soviet spy arrested by the FBI in 1957.
As seen on the trailer a couple of months ago, Donovan heads to Berlin, a city divided by barbed wire and concrete blocks, and dives into a world of spycraft and shadowy back-room dealing.
Kenneth Turan an American film critic describes "Bridge of Spies" as Spielberg's "tribute to a gifted amateur, a smooth entertainment with a strong but subtle political subtext that's both potent and unexpected."
Turan stated that, "Spielberg is so good he makes us forget that 'Bridge of Spies' is basically two separate films: one a courtroom drama, the other a spy thriller, with unexpected dark humor thrown into the bargain,"
"Storytelling this proficient is never something we see every day," he added.
Spielberg’s movie shows that the build-up involved agonisingly tense, deniable negotiations in bad faith, with each side calculating and re-calculating, with every day that went past, how likely it was that their man had damaged under interrogation, given up secrets, and therefore become worthless as an asset.
Hanks gives a very satisfying, watchable and assured performance, with just the right amount of hokum, homely and crooked in judiciously balanced proportions.
Mark Rylance plays the bespectacled and reserved Russian Abel, and Tom Hanks plays the civilian lawyer James Donovan who brokered the whole arrangement almost singlehandedly, and with pure amateur impulsiveness and stubbornness threw Pryor into the mix at the last moment.
Jimmy Stewart gave us Mr Smith Goes to Washington; Hanks gives us Mr Donovan Goes to Cold War Berlin.
Bridge of Spies has premiered at the New York film festival. The film was released in the US on October 16, Australia on October 22 and UK on November 27, 2015.
