Film: Bridge of Spies

GENRE: Drama

RATING: PG-13 for some violence & brief language
RUNTIME: 2 hours and 21 minutes

STARRING: Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips, Road to Perdition)

Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall), Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg (Schindler’s List, Munich, Lincoln)

WRITERS: Matt Charman (newcomer), Joel & Ethan Coen (Fargo)

PLOT: An insurance lawyer is asked to defend a Soviet spy and then help negotiate an exchange.

FIVE OBSERVATIONS:

1 Of course the reason to see this film is to watch Tom Hanks in action. He is the classic noble everyman. Maybe it’s because I’m reading To Kill a Mockingbird with my English class, but for the first half the movie Hanks is just like Atticus Finch. I love what Hanks brings to his characters.

2 This is based on a true story. I had no idea how it was going to end, so it kept me pretty engaged the entire time. It’s amazing what people went through back then.

3 Rylance is fantastic as the captured spy. I loved his calm, unruffled tone. His “would it help” made me smile every time.

4 As always Janusz Kaminski creates some beautiful images with his cinematography and Michael Kahn has some very fun transitions in this film, very clever at times. These two have been working with Spielberg for a long time. They know how to put a film together.

5 I was surprised that John Williams was not doing the music for this film; he always backs up Spielberg’s work. This time it was Thomas Newman (Skyfall, The Iron Lady), and it showed. There were some really cheezy swelling music that begged the audience to find speeches more meaningful than they actually were. Bring back Williams!

RECOMMENDATION: You can wait for DVD

UPCOMING REVIEWS: Steve Jobs (my 500^th Blog)