Bridge Of Spies is admittedly an incredible film with exceptional acting across the entire cast, a ratchet taught plot based on the true story of the Gary Powers and Rudolf Abel spy swap and some of the best period recreation work we’ve ever seen in modern cinema. However, having recently watched the film following the DVD release, we’d have to say that it just falls short of the critical reception it has received as it belabours a few of its core points in the end.
In all fairness to the historical drama, it’s only by a very fine margin, but there are just a few small things that prevent it from being entirely faultless. That probably sounds picky, which would be a fair assessment of our reaction to the film, but when you’re dealing with significant historical content, which is going out to the whole world then maybe a healthy dose of severe scrutiny is what you need.
The story revolves around New York insurance attorney James Donovan, who finds himself thrust into the media glare when he’s asked to represent captured Russian Spy, Rudolf Abel. However, this becomes even more intense when the Russians capture US U2 spy plane pilot, Gary Powers, and Donovan is subsequently required to negotiate the exchange of the prisoners in Berlin just as the wall is coming into force.
Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen have penned a razor sharp screenplay for the film with smart dialogue and a kind of sequential progression that creates tension, despite the fact that the story is fairly well known. However, there are little tells here and there that give the game away before it has been played out, which does a little too much to take the edge off things.
The cast is mostly impeccable with Tom Hanks delivering a very solid performance as James Donovan, doing a lot of little things to give him a subtle awareness that goes on to be a big part of his negotiation skills in the spy swap discussions in East Berlin. It’s good to see Alan Alda on the big screen again as he brings a lot of substance to the setup of Donovan’s part in the case as his boss Thomas Watters. Amy Ryan has perfect balance as James’ wife Mary and on the other side of the divide, Sebastian Koch is hard and forceful as German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel.
However, the second of our bug bears sits with one of the film’s best acting performances. Mark Rylance is genuinely mesmerising as Rudolf Abel, portraying him as an impassive stalwart of the Soviet Union with a deft simplicity that earned him his Academy Award for Best Supporting actor. The problem is that his “would it help” line is overused, lacking in variation and repetitive to the point of annoyance. The first time it’s delivered it’s this epic acceptance of his fate and indifference to the inevitable consequences that he must face, but by the third time you hear it you start to think he just doesn’t know what else to say, and that he’d heard the line once in an old movie and now just wheels it out any time he’s in a tricky situation. The reality though is that it is far less Rylance’s delivery of these lines, as much as it is either the direction or the screenplay that boxes him into them, which doesn’t work well.
The fact that Bridge Of Spies has been directed by Steven Spielberg is both a big part of why it’s so well delivered, but also why it lacks the teeth to really, really sink in deep. It’s definitely a memorable movie, but the few telegraphed situations and dot-to-dot walk through of the points it tries to hammer home at the end of the film unpicks some of the quality of the movie. There are a few opportunities a director has during a production to take a step back and reign things in to make a film great, but here he marches on relentlessly with a little too much red, white and blue to have the empathy, understanding and wisdom that it seems to aspire towards.
That said, our review still leaves the DVD as a must see and possibly the kind of film that you could easily re-watch again for years to come – if for nothing else for the quality of the set design and cinematography – but it is a shame that it isn’t quite the perfect storm that it could have been.
Bridge Of Spies DVD review: 4/5
