Genre: Film
Grade: A-/B+
Notable People: Tom Hanks, Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, Mark Rylance, Directed by Steven Spielberg
Title: Bridge of Spies
Review: This is real biography and one of three films we watched on our exhaustive flight to Hawaii. Not only directed by Spielberg, but produced and co-written by the Coen brothers, it is bit of a surprise for their resumes. Still, a well done film about late 50’s cold war antics between Russia and the U.S. with the closing down of Berlin and the erecting of The Wall as a backdrop. Hanks is his usual steady but magnificent self and Ryan is really understated as the committed Eisenhower era American housewife. Rylance is a revelation as the Soviet spy- very coyly played and a lot more subtly complicated than he might have been . The simmering tensions underlying the time are well done….see the scene with Hanks son filling up the bathtub to deal with the potential nuclear attack he hears about in school each day. This was a very good in-flight movie and worth seeing at the cinema.