Bridge Of Spies

(M) ★★★★

Director: Steven Spielberg.

Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Scott Sheppard, Austin Stowell, Alan Alda.

Google Maps had deceived Hanks yet again.

IT seems unlikely, given the natural progression of things, that Steven Spielberg will ever make a truly incredible masterpiece ever again.

He still makes great films, such as Lincoln, The Adventures Of Tin Tin and Catch Me If You Can, but none of these later-era pieces will ever be regarded as highly as Jaws, E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan.

With that in mind, Bridge Of Spies is another great later-era Spielberg film that will never be mentioned in the same breath as the six films just mentioned, but is great nonetheless.

Based on a true story, it stars Tom Hanks as Brooklyn lawyer James B Donovan, who was chosen to represent Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Rylance) at his espionage trial in 1957 before being involved in Abel’s prisoner exchange in East Berlin in 1962.

It’s a classic Cold War story, filled with the paranoias (both imagined and real) of the time, as the US and the USSR played a mirrored game of spies and charades.

Such a tale is well suited to Hanks and Spielberg, in their fourth pairing and first since The Terminal in 2004, with Hanks’ wholesome nature ably selling the leftist leanings of Donovan, and Spielberg nailing the vibe of the Cold War.

Each stars in their own usual way. While Hanks is out front-and-centre combining his usual all-American dignity and gosh-darn good values with his trademark warmth, Spielberg makes the story sing by telling it cleanly, crisply and intelligently.

The script, which was polished by the Coen Brothers, is delivered in as straightforward a fashion as possible. It tells its story efficiently, despite clocking in at 141 minutes. It never shortchanges on detail, it delivers its large amounts of exposition unobtrusively through solid dialogue and well mounted scenes, and it slowly ramps up its tension across two hours until it reaches near breaking point in the final showdown at the titular bridge.

It all works to remind you of why Spielberg is one of the greats. He handles the script, the actors and the camera with style. Bridge Of Spies is never flashy – it’s just always good, and with regular Spielberg cohorts Janusz Kamiński (cinematography) and Michael Kahn (editing) along for the ride, it’s always quality.

Hanks is ever-reliable and well cast, ably supported by a talented but low-wattage bunch of co-stars, with Rylance the standout as the no-nonsense Abel.

If Spielberg and Hanks’ filmographies were social structures, Bridge Of Spies would be satisfyingly upper-middle class.