Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Bridge of Spies’ is pure Spielberg

Dan Webster

If you haven't yet seen "Bridge of Spies," Steven Spielberg's newest film (that I keep wanting to call "Bridge of Sighs"), you might want to check out the review that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio. But, then, if you're a sucker for Spielberg movies, you might want to bypass my review and just go.

Actually, I don't think I'm all that harsh. You, however, might think differently. The review follows:

There are two Steven Spielbergs. The first is the Oscar-winning director behind such hard-hitting films as “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “Munich.” The other is the supreme entertainer, whose range of themes includes everything from straight comedies such as “1941,” action-adventures such as the “Indiana Jones” and “Jurassic Park” series or romantic indulgences such as “Always.”

Both Spielbergs exhibit the same technical skills. No other filmmaker alive or dead has a better feel for mainstream cinema – for displaying pristine cinematography, for framing a shot, for camera movement, for knowing just when to cut a scene and where to focus the viewer’s attention next. Watching almost any Spielberg-directed movie is tantamount to attending a master class in how to produce pure film.

Yet in virtually every situation, needed or not, Spielberg can’t help but lighten things up. I say virtually because nothing is light about the first 25 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” nor about the totality either of “Schindler’s List” or “Munich” – the latter being Spielberg’s 2005 film about Israeli assassins taking revenge on those who carried out the Black September attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Compare those films to Spielberg’s latest, “Bridge of Spies,” another in the filmmaker’s attempts to portray a real-life occurrence. Based on a series of real-life incidents that took place during the Cold War, “Bridge of Spies” centers on three main characters:

The first is James Donovan, a lawyer specializing in insurance claims. The second is Rudolf Abel, a taciturn man of mild manners who is, in reality, a Russian spy. The third is Francis Gary Powers, a young Air Force pilot who is part of a cadre of U.S. pilots who fly the high-altitude U2 spy plane.

When Abel is outed and arrested, Donovan – who served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials – is recruited to defend him. When Powers is shot down, arrested, tried and convicted of espionage by Russian authorities, Donovan is again approached, this time by the CIA, to help negotiate a secret deal to exchange Powers for the imprisoned Abel. The negotiations get complicated when, at Donovan’s insistence, the deal is amended to include the release of a Yale graduate student being held by the government of East Germany.

Spielberg portrays all this with his typical story-telling skills, augmented ably by the cinematography of two-time Oscar winner Janusz Kaminski. And his talented cast does its part, from dependable Tom Hanks as Donovan and British stage actor Mark Rylance as Abel to such actors as Amy Ryan, Sebastian Koch and even Alan Alda.

What Spielberg can’t do is restrain his own Capraesque tendency toward feel-good melodrama and for employing the cinematic shorthand of plot-point convenience. A perfect example: dueling subway scenes that, rather obviously, cast Donovan first as a villain, then as a hero.

So, yes, “Bridge of Spies” is, as an example of mainstream entertainment, a beautiful achievement. For those of us who want a bit more authenticity, though, it’s clear that even while portraying dark events, Steven Spielberg only rarely strays away from the light.