Directed by Steven Spielberg
Released October 16, 2015
That Steven Spielberg’s take on a spy film is handsomely crafted, well structured, and acceptably bland should come as little surprise. This isn’t even that damning a criticism toward the film, which seems to wear its mild take on the spy genre pretty proudly. By and large, this has become the groove Spielberg is most comfortable with when dealing with any period setting, be it the mid-19th century in Amistad, the Civil War Era in Lincoln, or World War II Europe in War Horse. For a filmmaker once regularly criticized for putting too much heart into his films (look no further than the now seemingly unfair comparisons — my own included — to Stanley Kubrick that followed Spielberg’s take on A.I.), his works now seem mostly devoid of it. They are, in a weird way, classic Hollywood contract pictures made by one of the most recognizable American filmmakers of the post-auteurist era. His stamp is now competency and accessibility. Credit is due, I suppose, for how good he is at both counts.
Some of this might come down to the fact that Bridge of Spies, a film sold in many ways as being a Cold War intrigue that might spark the interests of fans of The Americans and Deutschland 83, proved to be far more of a legal procedural, playing out the negotiating tactics of a particularly Tom Hanks-ian 1960s lawyer rather than the thrill of espionage. The most suspenseful segments usually involved the best interests of the film’s supporting players, accused and actual spies Rudolf Abel, Gary Powers, and Frederic Pryor, and when the film attempts to play up the threat to their lives, the motions are mostly even-keeled, playing up rote historical ideas of Soviet and East German fussiness and the American lynch mob mentality. The film’s arrival at the titular bridge tries to bring it all together — as, I suppose, was the case in reality — but the distance between the two main events that are playing into each other mutes a large amount of the impact.
To go old Hollywood with this material isn’t necessarily a bad calculation, even if it means that the final product lacks any modern critique that might have given the film some immediacy while losing a swath of the genteel audience that will find it’s lack of challenge to be comforting. It’s hard to argue that the film doesn’t have the desired effect of simple entertainment and a stroke of American egos without any particular missteps on its way to self-congratulation. This is, after all, an American spy film wherein our magnanimity toward those tasked with the same clandestine activities we send our own on is heralded. It’s an awesome amount of exceptionalism, even without being particularly exceptional.
