Tom Hanks Hilariously Reads Scripts Written by 8-Year-Olds

This isn’t one of those times. James Donovan (Hanks), an insurance lawyer in 1950s Brooklyn, is tasked by his firm to represent a captured Russian spy, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance).

British stage and screen actor Mark Rylance co-stars as Abel, a spy whose deadpan countenance serves as comic relief.

Just as the movie is about a bygone era of spying and diplomacy, this scene is from a bygone era of filmmaking, when Spielberg was first coming up with kids named De Palma, Scorsese, and Coppola.

Donovan fights for Abel despite the scorn of the public, the indifference of the legal system and the danger to his family. Freedom, compassion and the right to a fair trial were once the cornerstones of the country.

Spielberg chronicles his story as needed, but he must resort to heavy-handedness to draw out the drama, such as when Donovan’s Brooklyn home receives gunfire from vigilantes outraged about his assistance for Abel, or when Donovan first journeys into East Germany and a menacing group of street thugs forces his overcoat off him. The gradually developing respect between Abel and Donovan is full of surprising humor and warmth. Honestly, if the movie turned out to be just two hours of Tom Hanks and Jimmy Fallon playing a pair of goofy, binoculars-stealing spies who are also friends, you might as well just take our money now.

Like Spielberg, Tom Hanks is a master of his craft as well.

“When the picture opens in 1957, the U.S.is gripped by nuclear jitters and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is feverishly hunting Soviet spies”. Is it better than his more recent movies? That includes one scene of Donovan climbing up the Supreme Court steps to get the reprieve for Abel even as Powers is getting into the cockpit for his mission over Moscow. It is clear from the moment he starts the trial that Donovan is going to lose, so there’s no suspense there. He plays him as a highly intelligent foot soldier who has seen enough to know that even possible execution isn’t enough to get worked up over.

This is when both governments decided a prisoner swap is in order. “It just goes on and on and on, this motion and that motion”, shared Hanks. Hanks could do this kind of role in his sleep; luckily he doesn’t. That was in 1998, but their friendship goes back to the 1980s. Again on display is Kaminski’s extensive use of backlighting which too often eliminates our ability to see a face and get a feeling. More surprisingly, one also detects strong notes of Spielberg’s light-footed, 60s-set caper Catch Me if You Can, thanks to writers Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen’s economic screenplay which pointedly satires the groupthink and hysteria that defined the Cold War and prevents the film from becoming stately to a fault. He warns us that we are trading our principles for perceived security, that we are regularly happy to give up our ideals.