Il ponte delle spie

Bridge Of Spies is a historical drama film starring Tom Hanks, co-written by the Coen brothers, and directed by Steven Spielberg. Even though its subject matter of the Cold War is something I know very little about, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am now more interested than ever to learn more about it. I rank it among the best of Spielberg's most recent movies.

In 1957, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War are at their peak. Spies from both the American CIA and Soviet KGB are a major threat to the security of both world powers and each side often resorts to hasty measures to stop any classified information from being leaked. In Brooklyn, New York, Rudolf Abel is arrested under the suspicion of being a spy. James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is assigned as Abel's defence lawyer. However the idea of defending a potential Soviet spy proves to be an unpopular and difficult task for Donovan. Meanwhile, over in the Soviet Union, an American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down and captured by the KGB. As a means to ease tension between the two warring countries, Donovan proposes a swap between the two prisoners of war, Abel for Powers.

Despite containing barely any action scenes and being almost entirely made up of talking, the film never feels boring or slow paced. This is most likely due to the Coen brothers' clever screenplay and Steven Spielberg's creative direction. There were many suspenseful moments where it felt like the prisoner negotiations would go horribly wrong and that kept me on the edge of my seat. Tom Hanks also gives another memorable performance as James B. Donovan, once again proving his versatility as an actor.

I rate it 8.5/10.

This movie hit me really strangely.

I was expecting a political drama about the cold war, and while indeed it was that, I was not expecting to have so much fun and for Bridge of Spies to be so humorous.

The Coen brothers writing a movie Steven Spielberg would direct just sounds like a winning combination and it really was. Sealing the deal, was a great performance by Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks does what he does best, by playing an everyday man in an average life. James Donovan was just an insurance lawyer who gets caught up in the middle of the Cold War. Bridge of Spies, starts him off so normal and then turns his life into quite an adventure.

And I do mean adventure. In the hands of Spielberg, the movie's visuals were large and epic. I was expecting this movie to feel more like his last flick, Lincoln. Instead it feels more like Indiana Jones, as James Donovan travels to Berlin at the time when the wall was being completed.

Watching Hanks play Donovan who is just swept into an overwhelming situation and just keeps his cool and his charm is just highly enjoyable.

Totally loved Bridge of Spies, It's one of the best team ups between Hanks and Spielberg and even though Lincoln was a great movie, Bridge of Spies is everything Spielberg is capable of. So entertaining.

A feel-good Cold War melodrama, Bridge of Spies is an absorbing true-life espionage tale very smoothly handled by old pros who know what they're doing. In its grown-up seriousness and basis in historical conflict, Steven Spielberg's first feature since Lincoln three years ago joins the list of the director's half-dozen previous "war" films, but in its honoring of an American civilian who pulled off a smooth prisoner exchange between the East and West during a very tense period, the film generates an unmistakable nostalgia for a time when global conflict seemed more clear-cut and manageable than it does now. Spielberg's fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks, which world- premiered at the New York Film Festival and opens commercially on October 16, looks to generate stout box-office returns for Disney through the autumn season. For people of Spielberg's generation, the early years of the nuclear era and the stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union represents a significant part of the fabric of childhood. With the passage of time, it's possible to tell stories of the time without furnishing them with overt propagandistic overlays, and for Westerners there is the added built-in appeal of the "we won" factor and the perception that dealing with adversaries was so much simpler then than it is now. As their focus in this impeccably rendered recreation of a moment in history, most palpably represented by the building of the Berlin Wall, Spielberg and screenwriters Matt Charman and Ethan and Joel Coen have chosen a sort-of Atticus Finch of the north, a principled, American Everyman insurance attorney unexpectedly paged to represent a high-level Soviet spy caught in New York. There is no question that Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is guilty, but James B. Donovan (Hanks), a proper and decent family man with a professional dedication to his client and an abiding loyalty to the principles of the U.S. Constitution, has a quick and intuitive read of any legal situation and shrewdly stays at least one step ahead of the game in almost any situation.

Don't be fooled by the title. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into when you watch this film. Bridge of Spies is literally about the Cold War Bridge of Spies, where Soviet/US spies were exchanged through negotiations. This is nothing like "The Americans" (FX TV drama - for some high unrealistic and over-sexualized espionage action - redirect here) and the most action-packed scene you will see is Francis Gary Powers getting shot out of his U2 plane during his mission.

Bridge of Spies is really a historical/legal drama. And based on my preliminary research, they seem to be getting most of their facts right. Obviously a little bit embellished for Hollywood's sake, Bridge of Spies does a fine job as a historical docudrama. There is a lot of talking, but it's meaningful talking. At times, the film can be a little slow {opening scene, especially}, but give it a chance and you might enjoy it. History buffs like myself will definitely enjoy it. But thrill-seekers, you're better off to see the new James Bond movie instead.

Bridge of spies is not your typical movie, it almost seems like it would be boring, except it isn't. This film is like a tree that you drive by on your way to work. Nothing special, quite ordinary; and then one day you see it from a different angle, and the way the dew glistening off of its leaves catches the sunlight, just takes your breath away.

As I mentioned before, bridge of spies is different, it doesn't have a particularly memorable score, or poetic dialogue, every character is portrayed as a "regular guy/gal". The credit must go to the Coen brothers here. The actors lines, particularly the exchanges between Hanks' and Rylance's characters are stirring in their simplicity. The story unfolds similarly, everything sort of just happens, and at the end, it all fits together perfectly.

Nobody knows, what makes Spielberg so great, is it his groundbreaking camera work? or perhaps his implementation of cutting edge visual effects? In my humble opinion it is his enigmatic ability to take what would likely be dull and uninteresting in the hands of any other director, and turn it into a thing of wonder. This movie plays out naturally, with moments of subtle heroism, and true human emotion, it is so very downplayed, that one simply cannot pull their eyes away. Bridge of Spies is truly an Organic Wonder.