Review of Bridge of Spies (2015) by Ian H — 28 Jul 2016

I finally got around to this one because I got caught up on the Americans and I was still desperate for some good old US/Soviet espionage tensions. Bridge of Spies is a quintessential dad movie. I really wanna see the numbers on that, too.

I mean, I'm guessing 90% of the people who saw the movie were either dads or children/spouses taken to see this film against their will. Just a hunch. Spielberg's latter day directing always seems to have a touch of corniness, but holy hell does the man know how to put together a movie (at least in terms of cast and crew.

In regard to his actual nuts and bolts directing, well, more on that in a minute). The period production design is tremendous, Mark Rylance emerges as an unknown treasure (and it's a shame he doesn't have more to do in this film, though the Oscar is well deserved), Thomas Newman's score is particularly excellent and really stands apart from your typical, commonplace, ho-hum Hollywood drama film music, and Tom Hanks is still the cinematic equivalent of comfort food.

The film is a bit of an overstuffed mess in the middle (notably when introducing us to the two Americans Hanks' character is attempting to liberate, who function more as live action props rather than characters) but the scene on the bridge at the end, hot damn.

Speilberg show's he's still got it, or at least he can pull out ten minutes of transcendent filmmaking in a two hour and fifteen minute long movie that's mostly just pretty good.