BRIDGE OF SPIES [2015]

COLD WAR'S COLD SHOULDER

2015, USA
Steven Spielberg
7 // 10




When is a spy thriller not a spy thriller and legal drama not a legal drama? Can Cold War look real on Blu-Ray? Was Steven Spielberg a cheesemonger in his former life? There's only one way to find out!

Drama/History/Thriller says IMDB. Historical drama legal thriller says Wikipedia. Tom Hanks: The Movie, says I. Which is OK to a point.

It may have been my fault. I desperately avoid reading about films I want to watch, because I don't like spoilers. As a result I was expecting a little bit more Cold War and a little bit more spying. Thankfully I didn't read the Wikipedia entry beforehand, otherwise I'd have expected courtroom drama and a thriller as well.

BRIDGE OF SPIES is none of these things. BRIDGE OF SPIES is a film, in which Steven Spielberg lets Tom Hanks be as much Tom Hanks as he wants in a similar fashion as when Tim Burton lets Johnny Depp go full Depp. Although Spielberg/Hanks duo is much safer to put your bets on, for BRIDGE OF SPIES is not that much of a self-indulgence festival. I'd still be probably most comfortable with describing it simply as a historical drama, full stop. But then again, does it really matter that much? I should probably just get over myself.

What does matter and what I can't get over with is the fact that this identity crisis results in softening the focus and watering down the drama and the tension of the story. Also (god, I've said this so many times...) the pace is wrong. Which is all a bit odd and unusual for Spielberg. Even in a film as fast moving as CATCH ME IF YOU CAN the characters seemed to have just that little bit more weight and depth to them, the sequence of events felt more natural. In BRIDGE... however the oversimplification of the plot starts to get in the face a bit. As in, I don't need to have Powers' mission and Donovan's speech put together so blatantly. Only a demented spaniel could have difficulties with working out how the story's gonna go while the rest of us, well, we know it from history anyway, so no need to treat all of us like Americans, Mr Spielberg.

The slightly deviating historical accuracy, however, I'm OK with. It's not a documentary, cinema has it's own rights and the changes Spielberg introduced are far from fundamental.

When it comes to performances, well, like I said already, Hanks is just being Hanks here. Nothing groundbreaking but solid enough. It's Rylance who's the star of the show. His screen presence is quiet, withdrawn and minimal and yet he's managed to create a character who's so flesh-and-blood, it feels as if he came out of the screen. Every tiny shrug, every sniffle is absolutely immaculate, timed and executed to perfection. This fatalistic minimalism only adds to already incredibly well written character, whose stance and reaction to the events stems more from his personal background than an intelligence training. 

It feels weird to write it but overall, I find BRIDGE... to be a little bit of a slip up for Spielberg. The man has been the embodiment of storymaking in cinema. He's always seemed to be able to play the exactly right note, pull the exactly right string. Here, minutely, but something rings false. The depth, the tension, the drama are just not there, not to the level that would fit the story. I wanted George Smiley, I got Jack Ryan.