Spielberg and Hanks recall childhood in the Cold War

That’s all to say that “Bridge of Spies”, which waxes poetic – and occasionally cynically – on patriotism, honor, and duty, echoes in your mind long after the credits roll and begs for a second viewing.

The movie also features performances by Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan and Alan Alda. Gregory Peck was gonna play Donovan… Though US Cold War propaganda is subjected to a fair amount of scrutiny, the director remains, as he’s always been, an un-ironic believer in the American way of life. Abel is imprisoned but becomes useful years later when Air Force U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down over the Soviet Union while taking intelligence photographs.

Should you go? Yes, especially if your tastes run to oldie-but-goodie movies. The film, though, doesn’t seem to care whether you care about them – not in the way it does for Abel, anyway.

Arguably more than any American director in movie history, Steven Spielberg’s work has successfully married populist entertainment with expert filmmaking craft.

Spielberg cringingly juxtaposes the two scenarios against each other, to make its point that both countries have spies, who are just doing their duty. Through it all, however, it’s one man against the Central Intelligence Agency, the USA justice system, public opinion, the Russians and then the East Germans.

The US government and Donovan’s legal associates wanted Abel to have the semblance of a proper defense, but no more.

Set in an global arena but staged on a more intimate scale than Spielberg’s 2012 historical epic “Lincoln”, “Bridge of Spies” is about a man of courage and principles.

But the story’s focus on Abel is juxtaposed with near-indifference to Powers and detained American student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers). The Soviets want to make sure that Abel doesn’t give the US any secrets and if he does, they want to know what secrets he gave away, and likewise for Powers and the United States. Just as the trial’s conclusion is clear, so too is the prisoner swap, it doesn’t even appear that hard to engineer, and again we are left without much tension. That was in 1998, but their friendship goes back to the 1980s. Hanks is mesmerizing as the sharp witted attorney/negotiator and Rylance is enigmatic as the Russian spy.

While Bridge of Spies may take place decades ago, during the height of the Cold War, the message Spielberg is offering about today is quite clear. It turns out that he really made efforts to avoid them, explaining, I didnt want to know anything about Donovan. (The film, based on actual events, mostly skims past one of the most fascinating tales in the annals of global espionage, involving a little boy who’s given a hollow nickel with microfilm concealed within.) McCarthyism had largely died down by that time, but America still looked upon Communists with sheer loathing; defending one was tantamount to representing a child molester.