Film: 'Bridge of Spies'.

This is a rattling good film. 

I tend to be wary of Spielberg as, for me, despite his mastery of the genre, his single greatest weakness is to lay sentiment on with a trowel such that it overwhelms all else. Not so here. Although he lets emotion have its head in the closing few minutes with a cosily reassuring domestic epilogue, as to the previous two hours and a quarter I was totally engrossed throughout. And all is achieved with no showy action sequences or special effects, and with a superior script whose writers include both the Coen brothers.

It starts in 1957 with the East-West Cold War now in full combative mode. In New York, a Russian man believed to be a Soviet spy is arrested (Mark Rylance - a major name in British theatre, with a fair bit of TV work also; less so in film up to now.). A private insurance lawyer (Tom Hanks) is roped in, reluctantly, by the CIA to defend the suspected spy, the American government wanting to keep their involvement in the Russian's defence at arm's length because of the politically sensitive nature of the case. 
After the trial an American pilot, Gary Powers, operating a spy plane over the Soviet Union is shot down and arrested, giving the Russians a publicity coup which they milk for all its worth. A situation of brinkmanship between the two major powers develops and Hanks is slated to arrange a spy exchange, though with a most unwelcome complication of an American student being arrested in Berlin by East German authorities just as the dividing wall is being constructed. 

The cast also includes, in a small role, Alan Alda as a CIA chief, now looking, sadly, very old (though he is now nearly 80!). The very few female roles are merely peripheral, the main one being the Hanks' character's wife, who has very little to say.

I am old enough to recall the news of pilot Gary Powers being used as a bargaining tool by the Soviets, as well as the building of the Berlin wall, with heartbreaking scenes of desperate Germans living on the east side being shot in their vain attempts to escape over to the west, horrifically and tragically publicly bleeding to death on the razed 'no man's land' area near the wall. However, at the time I knew hardly anything of the the Russian guy, the Rylance role, being held by the Americans. 

The first half of the film is set in America; the second (in which Rylance only appears at the end) is in snowy Berlin, with the climactic spy exchange scene on a bridge. (Apparently Hanks' conspicuous sniffling cold throughout this second part was genuine.)
The film maintains its suspense throughout even though we can guess that it'll probably work out okay - and those of us who recall the actual news at the time know that it does. But it's still gripping stuff.

One of Spielberg's best in my view - and that's from someone who's only really liked a handful of his films - his very early ones and just a very few of his from the 90s and 00s. But this is certainly one to see....................8.