Bridge of Spies

For F*** Magazine

BRIDGE OF SPIES

Director : Steven Spielberg

Cast : Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Austin Stowell, Will Rogers, Sebastian Koch

Genre : Drama

Run Time : 142 mins

Opens : 15 October 2015

Rating : PG13 (Some Coarse Language)

We’ve had our late-summer fun with The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but with fall awards movie season upon us, it’s time to revisit the Cold War in a far more serious manner. It is 1957 and Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Rylance) is captured by the FBI in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Bar Association elects for insurance attorney James Donovan (Hanks) to serve as Abel’s counsel. Three years later, after U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers (Stowell) is captured by the Soviets, Donovan is tasked with negotiating his release. The deal is an exchange of Abel for Powers. Naturally, things aren’t that clear-cut, and the East Germans have American student Frederic Pryor (Rogers) in custody. With the odds stacked high against him, Donovan flies to East Berlin to bargain for the safe return of both Americans as the threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers looms ever greater. 

Bridge of Spies is based on the 1960 U-2 incident, an actual event, with a screenplay by Matt Charman and rewritten by Joel and Ethan Coen. The title refers to Glienicke Bridge, which was the site for several prisoner exchanges between the Americans and Soviets. The film has been described as a “Cold War thriller”, but it’s more of a courtroom drama and not an action-driven spies vs. spies affair. Director Spielberg’s follow-up to 2012’s Lincoln is another sombre awards contender, but this is more accessible to the average filmgoer, less dense and scholarly. Bridge of Spies is an old-fashioned drama, with the bleakness of a rubble-strewn East Germany evoking the gloomy vision of Vienna as seen in the classic spy film The Third Man. There is a stillness about the film, which is very much a slow burn. Spielberg’s films are seen by many as varying degrees of schmaltzy. While Bridge of Spies certainly has its emotionally impactful moments, it is largely restrained and the feeling of frigid detachedness effectively captures the atmosphere of the Cold War.

If the film that surrounds him is cold, Hanks is Bridge of Spies’ warm, beating heart. In this, his fourth collaboration with Spielberg, Hanks is called upon to embody the archetype of a decent man in an indecent time. If there’s anything Hanks can play, it’s “decent” – he does that and so much more here. James Donovan is a consummate professional who is flung into unfamiliar territory but who always stands his ground, his attentiveness and upstanding nature recalling To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch. It turns out that Gregory Peck almost played Donovan in 1965, with Alec Guinness set to play Abel opposite him, but the film was ultimately called off as the era was too fraught with political tension for it to be made. When Donovan arrives in East Germany, construction has just begun on the Berlin Wall, and the angle of a relatively ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances is the audience’s way in. As Donovan is accosted by gang members, catches a cold and has to deal with Soviet and East German officials, he remains admirably steadfast, clinging to his principles, the ideal unassuming hero. 

Rylance, a veteran of the London stage, is coolly compelling as Rudolf Abel. Abel is a Russian spy, ostensibly the bad guy, but the film doesn’t demonise him, taking the stance that the Soviets had their spies and the Americans had theirs. Rylance’s Abel is unflappable and inscrutable, and the unlikely bond that Abel forms with Donovan makes for a fascinating and subtly moving dynamic. While audiences are very familiar with Hanks, Rylance isn’t as recognisable a name, and perhaps that unfamiliarity adds to Abel’s mystique. Spielberg apparently enjoyed working with the actor and Rylance will play the title character in Spielberg’s next film, The B.F.G. Defending Abel makes Donovan a very unpopular man indeed, and this takes its toll on his family, especially his wife Mary (Ryan). The scenes involving Donovan’s family and Pryor’s arrest at the border are the closest Spielberg comes to indulging his more sentimental sensibilities, but these moments are necessary to establish the personal stakes involved. 

Spielberg’s usual cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and editor Michael Kahn bring the technical polish that we’ve come to expect from his films, but one key collaborator is missing: composer John Williams. Owing to a minor health issue which has now been resolved, Williams was replaced by Thomas Newman. Newman’s score is appropriately dignified, containing his own trademark instrumentation while not sounding a million miles away from what Williams might have written. 

Spielberg has always been an idealist, and along with lead actor Hanks, he brings a reassuring, old-fashioned moral certainty to this tale set in one of the murkiest eras in modern history. Even so, Bridge of Spies avoids being naïve and manipulative in its account of the U-2 incident negotiation process. Perhaps this reviewer just isn’t that much of an intellectual, but the one action sequence in which Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot out of the sky did make him hanker for another Spielberg-directed straight-up action adventure. Of course, that’s not the kind of film Bridge of Spies is, and it lives up to the pedigree before and behind the camera, succeeding at being a sturdy, well-made historical drama. 

Summary: As prestigious as prestige pictures get, Bridge of Spies is a restrained, quiet drama anchored by Tom Hanks’ reassuring presence, with thespian Mark Rylance stealing the show from him at times. 

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong  

Captain Phillips

For F*** Magazine

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, David Worshofsky, Corey Johnson, Chris Mulkey, Catherine Keener, Max Martini, Omar Berdouni
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Run Time: 134 mins
Opens: 14 November 2013
Rating: PG (Some Violence)

Forrest ain’t no shrimpin’ boat captain no more.

In this film based on the book A Captain’s Duty, a memoir written by the Richard Phillips of the title with Stephan Talty, Tom Hanks as Phillips is in charge of a much larger vessel than the Jenny – the MV Maersk Alabama. What was to be a routine voyage from Oman to Mombasa for the freighter turns extremely dangerous, the area living up to its notorious reputation as a hotbed for piracy. A crew of pirates from Eyl, Somalia led by Muse (Abdi) hijacks the Alabama in search of a payday. Captain Phillips, his first mate Shane Murphy (Chernus) and the rest of the crew have to avoid death at the hands of the pirates. The marauders eventually kidnap Captain Phillips, holding him hostage aboard a lifeboat as a Navy SEAL rescue mission is put in motion. Frightened for his life and trapped in a confined space, Captain Phillips has to tough it out as a full-blown crisis quickly unravels around him.

Director Paul Greengrass, who comes from a documentary filmmaking background, has become known for films that put the audience right in the thick of it with cinéma vérité-style handheld camera work, tight closeups and grain and noise-filled nighttime scenes. You can almost smell the seawater, feel the heat of the engine room and might emerge feeling a wee bit seasick. This is absolutely the right approach for Captain Phillips, Greengrass’ hand in the proceedings ensuring that this feels authentic and visceral as opposed to glossy and embellished. It’s a “based on a true story” type deal that unfolds in a way that does seem very close to how the actual events might have went, though nobody except those directly involved can say for certain. 

The film has attracted a degree of controversy in the form of some sailors aboard the Maersk Alabama filing suit against the Maersk Line and the Watership Steam Corp, claiming that Captain Phillips was not the hero the film made him out to be and that the hijacking was caused in part by his negligence and arrogance. Director Greengrass has defended the depiction of Captain Phillips in the film, having done the research and making judgement calls in his direction, saying he stands by the movie’s version of events “100%”. At the end of the day, the story has been told in a gripping, engaging manner and for those who appreciate Greengrass’ other films based on true events, Bloody Sunday and United 93, this is a must-watch.

Tom Hanks is an actor who has been much-celebrated over the course of his career and who has become a much-beloved figure in the movie biz. He has attracted well-deserved Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Richard Phillips; if there’s anyone who can do the “everyman thrust into a life or death situation” thing, it is Tom Hanks. He isn’t an actor who jumps around onscreen, waving his hands and proclaiming “look at me, I’m a movie star” – this could well have been the case were it a different actor in the captain’s chair. Hanks’ Captain Phillips works hard at containing his fear and is calm and even in his interactions with his captors; Hanks’ layered performance working all these emotions in. There’s a particularly shocking moment during the movies denouement that Hanks plays extremely well. 

Aside from Catherine Keener, who has a brief appearance as Phillips’ wife Andrea, the cast is bereft of “name actors”, which definitely keeps the movie from getting distracting as an overly familiar face in a supporting role might well pull one out from the moment. Wiry-framed Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi who plays the leader of the pirates is intense, intimidating and naturalistic in his portrayal. He totally holds his own against Tom Hanks; Hanks has said he was “truly petrified” acting opposite Abdi and the other actors who played the pirates. The film is commendable in giving them just enough backstory for the audience to grasp their motivations, instead of portraying them as cackling movie monsters.

The film does take a while to get into gear, it’s probably a good 40 minutes before the pirates board the Alabama. That said, Greengrass’ pacing is impeccable, the events taking on a true unpredictability in spite of the procedure and protocol of the rescue mission shown. It certainly doesn’t feel like a vainglorious military propaganda piece the way something like Act of Valor was. The focus stays square on the title character even when SEALs and military figures enter the fray. It may seem like a cliché, but this is one of those movies simply about men and women going about their jobs - it’s just that said jobs can take on stakes far higher than most of us can imagine. 

Henry Jackman’s soundtrack can be pretty generic at times and there at moments when the computer-generated imagery used to create long shots of the ships is a wee bit conspicuous, but this does very little to take away from the genuine tension that fuels the film. It’s no mean feat to make an audience feel stuck in a harrowing situation alongside the protagonist – that’s exactly what Greengrass, Hanks, screenwriter Billy Ray and crew have done with Captain Phillips.

SUMMARY: It’s nail-biting suspense on the high seas as director Paul Greengrass and star Tom Hanks bring a “ripped from the headlines” story to riveting, involving life.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Angels & Demons

Movie Review                                                                                                                                  24/5/09

ANGELS & DEMONS

2009

Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer

Directed by: Ron Howard

Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures

           

 Harvard professor and symbology super-sleuth Robert Langdon is back in this second adaptation of a Dan Brown novel. Besides the main character (played again by the unimitatable Tom Hanks), the Oscar-winning team of director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer have returned for the sequel. In the wake of 2006’s critically-derided The Da Vinci Code, how does its screen sequel fare?

            This time around, Howard and big-name screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp have made more of an effort to trim off the unwieldy excess from Brown’s narrative, and went for the ticking-bomb-thriller approach as opposed to the conspiracy theory 101 class we were forced to sit through the first time around. The filmmakers have wisely optimized the thriller material with which they were presented, so there is more running between churches than talking heads.

            The film begins with the death of the beloved Pope, and the cardinals of the world have gathered in Vatican City for the papal conclave, i.e. the election of a new Pope. However, in the midst of this, it appears that the Illuminati secret society, an old enemy of the Catholic Church, has resurfaced, kidnapping four of the favourites for the papacy and threatening retribution for the Church’s “crimes” against them some 400 years ago.

            The “ticking bomb” in this context is a canister of antimatter, a volatile experimental substance harvested by particle physicists at CERN (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland. The canister has been stolen by the Illuminati, who are now using it to hold the church hostage.

            And that’s where Robert Langdon comes in. He is roped in by Inspector Ernesto Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) of the Gendarme Corps of Vatican City State (otherwise known as the Vatican Police) and decipher cryptic symbols left as clues by the Illuminati and assist the Swiss Guard and the afore-mentioned Vatican Police in rescuing the four cardinals and finding the antimatter before it consumes the Vatican. Meanwhile, Commandante Richter (Stellan Skarsgard) of the Swiss Guard is largely dismissive of Langdon and is deliberately hostile to him.

            The Harvard Professor is given the blessing of the idealistic young priest Camerlengo Patrick MacKenna (McGregor), a favourite of the late Pope and his former right-hand man. The earnest Camerlengo seems the most desperate to end the madness. The beautiful CERN physicist Vittoria Vetra (Zurer) is also drawn into the fray, but even the combined expertise of both academics seems almost powerless to stop the looming Illuminati threat.

            Now, if the above synopsis sounds far-fetched, be warned that it is just the tip of this cinematic iceberg. Author Dan Brown is known for meddling fact and fiction and even passing off the former as the latter, achieving at-times laughable results. Plenty of plot points are downright ludicrious and there are enough contrivances to fill St Peter’s Square. The key prefix in this film is “psuedo” – the film is built on psuedo-science, psuedo-history, pretty much psuedo-everything. Stock characters and a fish market of red herrings also populate the picture. Therefore, suspension of disbelief is key. Thankfully though, the movie is paced well-enough, so much so that one eventually buys into the hodgepodge and goes along for the ride.

            We are treated to a wonderful tour of The Vatican City that is part The Amazing Race (but with dead bodies and shootouts instead of roadblocks and detours), part dramatic angel’s-eye-views of the world’s smallest country. The fortress-church Castel Sant’ Angelo, the famous Sistine Chapel, Santa Maria Del Popolo with its imposing obelisk and the former Roman temple of “all gods” the Pantheon all figure in this whirlwind romp. While some of Angels & Demons was shot on location, the filmmakers were not granted access to several sites within the Vatican Walls, as such set reconstructions and some digital magic was employed. The results are actually fairly impressive, one might even be fooled into thinking the computer-generated replicas are the real thing.

            This leads on to the cinematography of the film by Director of Photography Salvatore Totino. Totino excels in sweeping vistas of cavernous cathedrals, and many scenes are gorgeously lit, presenting the locales at their most mysterious and beautiful. The cinematography is ultimately one of the main strong points of the film. There is an enjoyable little sequence in which the main characters enter an abandoned church and Totino milks the location for all its horror-movie-style potential, even including a smart visual gag involving a pair of contractor’s boots.

            A quick mention must be made of the lush yet kinetic score from famed film composer Hans Zimmer, whose past credits include Batman Begins, the Pirates of the Caribbean films and even The Lion King (which gave him one of his seven Oscar wins). The violin solo by virtuoso Joshua Bell is also something of a masterpiece and even adds some depth to the film.

            Ron Howard and company are eminent forces in Hollywood today and exert that power by casting relatively big names. While this film boasts slightly less star power than its predecessor (The Da Vinci Code had actors such as Jean Reno and Ian McKellen among its cast), everyone puts in fairly credible performances here. Tom Hanks lends much credibility to the Langdon role, and gets plenty more to do in this than in the last film, from dodging bullets to saving a drowning man and from taking a dip in speedos to feverishly thumbing through ancient documents. Some of the time though, Hanks clearly has his tongue in his cheek, and especially excels in the rare humourous moments that do ease the cinematic tension. As the female lead, Israeli actress Zurer does barely as good a job as Hanks, relegated to tagging along in the mad dashes from church to church. However, she isn’t a bad actress per se and I look forward to seeing her in more Hollywood projects.

            After appearing in smaller films and adventuring around the world for the last several years, it is good to see Ewan “Obi-Wan” McGregor turning in his Jedi robes from the Star Wars prequel trilogy for the Camerlengo’s cossack and back in a blockbuster, and truth be told he does a mighty fine job. However, it is not exactly believable that the youngish McGregor plays a fairly high-ranking priest, especially when other characters have to call him “Father”, and McGregor also visibly stumbles through an unwieldly soliloquy. The character, originally Italian in the book, is now Irish to accommodate the Scottish actor, and as such the Camerlengo’s backstory seems largely implausible. Ultimately though, the Camerlengo is one of the most complex characters in the film, and McGregor is largely able to parse the finer nuances in his portrayal. The incredible Stellan Skarsgard (whom we’ve seen in such films as Good Will Hunting, The Hunt For the Red October and the Pirates of the Caribbean films) seems under-utilized as the prickly Commandante, despite this the actor still fleshes out the slight bitterness his character bears towards Langdon with much relish.

            The film’s small departures from the book seem to be a two-edged sword; on one hand the story has been streamlined and does work better for the screen, but on the other, interesting characters and other elements seem to have been sacrificed. For example, instead of the generic, bespectacled assassin-for-hire played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas, the book’s politically-incorrect but more interesting version was a brutish, imposing Middle-Eastern rapist. Also, the book came before The Da Vinci Code, but the timeline has been altered such that this functions as a sequel, and the romantic subplot has been jettisoned in favour of a strictly professional relationship between Langdon and Vetra. However, producer Brian Grazer did state that the filmmaking team was too "reverential" when adapting The Da Vinci Code, which resulted in it being "a little long and stagey". Therefore, the wiggle room this time around does more help than harm in the long run.

           

            The movie is enjoyable in spite of (or perhaps because of) its sheer absurdity, offering up legitimate thrills and even a couple of outstanding action sequences. Far from being offensive or overly-controversial, Angels & Demons ends up being more cotton candy fluff than a “lofty quest”. But have angels guided Howard and Co. in their mission nonetheless? Perhaps, though this film does have its fair share of demons to contend with as well.

RATING: 3.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong