As a child of the Cold War, Steven Spielberg probably went through the duck-and-cover drill. In those days, the 1950s, the U.S. government circulated instructional films telling kids that they could survive by ducking under their desks if the Reds dropped an atom bomb near their schoolhouse. Fortunately, the theory was never tested, yet there were several episodes when the Cold War nearly turned hot. One incident—the Soviet downing of a U2 (a high-altitude American spy plane) and the capture of its pilot—forms the backdrop to Spielberg’s new film, Bridge of Spies.
“Inspired by true events,” Spielberg and his screenwriters invented within the confines of their primary source book, Strangers on a Bridge, in which American insurance lawyer James B. Donovan recounts his role in negotiating the U2 pilot’s release in exchange for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy in U.S. custody. We first meet Abel (Mark Rylance), a dour, elderly amateur painter, dropping microfilmed documents in a New York park (the film doesn’t explain how he obtained them). Enter Donovan, played by stolidly likable Tom Hanks. The successful New York attorney is handed a prominent pro bono brief: defend Abel against espionage charges carrying a maximum penalty of death. Donovan winces slightly but his partners make the case: America needs to show the world that—unlike the Soviet Union—it is ruled by law, not political expediency. Abel has already been convicted by the press, represented throughout as packs of scavengers, flashbulbs snapping like crows’ beaks tearing at carrion. Donovan is aware that the press will prosecute him in the angry court of public opinion.
The screenplay doesn’t support Donovan’s rise from reluctant functionary to crusader for justice and the American way; he extolls the “rule book” as he calls the Constitution, but his willingness to put his family in jeopardy from violence as well as endure professional ostracism for going beyond the motions is never examined. In any event, Donovan convinces the judge to waive Abel’s death penalty with the foresight that, one day, the Soviet spy might come in handy for a trade. He continues to fight Abel’s conviction on appeal (the FBI didn’t bother with the niceties of a search warrant), but loses.
And then, Donovan is summoned to the office of the mysterious Allen Dulles, the CIA director, who asks the attorney to fly to East Berlin to negotiate just such a trade—Abel for Francis Gary Powers, the captured U2 pilot convicted of spying by a Soviet tribunal. It’s all unofficial, of course—hush, hush. Donovan doesn’t hesitate and enters a twilight world where no one is who he claims to be.
Matt Charman wrote the original script before it was doctored by Ethan and Joel Coen. The brothers’ touch can be felt in the droll humor of the poker-faced Abel and the trivia painstakingly amassed by spymasters on both sides. Dulles already knows that Donovan always takes two lumps of sugar in his coffee, and the KGB’s Berlin chief knows that Donovan’s overcoat, stolen by a street gang on his way to the Soviet embassy, was purchased at Saks. The screenplay’s serious message concerns Donovan’s campaign to ensure that Abel—citizen or not, guilty of endangering America or not—is given due process. The analogy between the Cold War and the War on Terror is clear enough.
Bridge of Spies becomes longish from the intercutting between Donovan and Powers’ stories and from the many reminders of the anxious mindset of America under the shadow of nuclear war, yet Spielberg moves the pieces forward with the efficiency of an old pro. Most of the period details, down to TV ads and matchbook covers, are meticulously recreated. Curiously, however, for a story set in smoke-filled times, the only person enjoying a cigarette is the Soviet spy. Otherwise, the decorative ashtrays are empty.
Bridge of Spies
3 stars
Tom Hanks
Mark Rylance
Directed by Steven Spielberg
PG-13
