• Title: Bridge of Spies
• IMDb: link

Set in a smaller world during a darker time, the latest collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks takes place at the height of the Cold War and is inspired by the real events concerning Brooklyn lawyer James B. Donovan (Hanks) who found himself thrust into the middle of international intrigue by agreeing to defend Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in an American court of law. Spielberg’s humanism is certainly on display in a film that feels a bit like a throwback to his movies from the late 90s and early 2000s.

While dealing primarily with Donovan and the effects and consequences of his defense of Abel, Bridge of Spies also introduces two subplots which eventually will be woven into the main storyline. The first of these concerns U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) recruited by the CIA and shot down over the Soviet Union. And the last concerns an American economics student (Will Rogers) studying overseas during the erection of the Berlin Wall who gets in trouble while trying to help the daughter of his professor out of East Germany. Although competently presented, neither is as engaging as Donovan’s tale.

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