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| Tom Hanks stars as Brooklyn lawyer Jim Donovan, a Jimmy Stewart type in over his head in 'Bridge of Spies.' |
Tom Hanks is terrific as
the American constitutional man of honor in “Bridge of Spies,” standing up for
the lives of an innocent young man and two spies, one American and one Russian,
against the fear, paranoia and hair-trigger national ruthlessness of the
nuclear 1950s. I deliberately postponed reading reviews until afterward, but I
did catch Dann Gire’s apt reference to Capra. That’s it, it’s heart-tugging
Cold War Capra. It’s that utterly absorbing kind of film I call a day-breaker.
I didn’t realize Spielberg had directed it until I noticed that it had three
endings. Bring a discreet hanky.
I’ve been on that bridge —
the Glienicker Brücke across the Havel River connecting the Wannsee district of
Berlin with the Brandenburg capital Potsdam — but it didn’t look so romantic
when I was there the year after the wall fell.
As our bus passed over it,
our German guide mentioned casually that this had been “that bridge where they
traded the spies,” and all the thrilled American journalists shouted, “Stop the
bus! Stop the bus!”
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