I recently watched the latest film that features the recurring collaboration of those two notable Hollywood tours de force; messrs Hanks and Spielberg. Yes the intrinsically iconic director and the formidably iconic actor reunited in a slick, stylish and poignant Cold War thriller - Bridge of Spies.
Powerful, fast-flowing, thought-provoking and not at all dull, the teaming of sterling director and leading man seem to have puled it off once again; as Bridge of Spies seems to both hark back to a simpler way of War Film genre that does not involve violence and gratuitous blood and shooting, as well as being crisp and pitched enough to compete with the best modern thrillers around.
Based on the life of notorious legal mind James B. Donovan (played superbly by Hanks) and his efforts to secure the release of captured American pilots, and prisoner exchanges via Soviet-controlled Berlin of suspected spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), Bridge of Spies really does smack to me of a future classic.
Beautifully shot, accompanied by a superb score by another notorious movie name Thomas Newman, choc full of period touches and elements that are pitched just right, and achieving perfect balance of real old-school thriller moments (including a fantastic sequence of Tom Hanks being tailed and chased in the rain by a mystery sleuth) as well as hard hitting drama that smacks you in the face without warning before thrusting you back into the phenomenally crafted world of, cool, covert yet raw Cold War espionage.
Yet for all this films' many plus points (and there are quite a few) to me it can be summed up very simply; this is the Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance show. Two genius acting heavyweights of such talent, range, precision and power that you are instantly drawn to their characters of Donovan and Abel respectively. Every scene, nay every frame that features either Tom Hanks or Mark Rylance immediately captures you and holds you in a vice-like grip that is woefully addictive. And when they appear together; well to my mind there have been very few examples in recent times of two such superb actors both playing against and uniting with each other in such superb harmony.
Such is the way that they inhabit their own characters, and then hurl them at each other, as well as entwining together to such unique and incredible effect.
Of course, Tom Hanks needs no introduction and certainly does not need to prove himself to anyone as an actor, but to see him do his thing is never ever repetitive, and here as in any other film, to see him take on James Donovan's journey is a joy. Never has art imitated life so truly as when Rylance's Abel asks Hanks' Donovan - "are you good at what you do?" To which Tom Hanks deftly, modestly and brilliantly replies - "yeah...pretty good."
And yet scene for scene, brilliance by brilliance, we see the rising talent and superb actor that is Mark Rylance dutifully and perfectly match Tom Hanks' Donovan as suspected Soviet spy and code-breaker Rudolph Abel. He is perfectly nuanced, and imperfectly sublime. If ever there was a man to best Hanks in terms of how much you were looking forward to seeing someone in a scene during this film, Mark Rylance is most certainly it. My only slight mar and problem with his performance was that Abel's supposedly Northern English accent seemed to sway ever so slightly into Scottish which was a tad off-putting, but otherwise my only issue with Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies is that we did not see nearly enough of him; fully and totally deserving of his Oscar.
So, yes Bridge of Spies is a great modern take on a classic Cold War spy thriller. Yet above and beyond that, if you just want to see two great acting performances, look no further than Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance.
