Spielberg and Hanks team up again to cover the next chapter of American History after Saving Private Cliché back in 1998, aka Spielberg Americanizes Stalingrad. Still, I couldn’t help but like this little Thriller-Drama-History puff piece despite it playing fast and loose with facts. It’s why Hollywood now uses their disclaimer “Inspired by True Events”…translation, we changed up a crap-load of facts because the Pentagon would withdraw our access to records/access and the truth is “boring.” How I wish I had more time/energy to read a book which could sort out the reality since the History Channel has become another outlet for terrible “reality” programming when it’s not airing more WWII nostalgia. One thing that was surprising, Hanks’ character, James B Donovan really did defend the Soviet spy Abel and negotiated the exchange of Powers. Donovan isn’t an amalgamation of several people to save time and generate more sympathy.
The trailers give away what I’m about to state so fear not, besides, this is History which rarely has spoilers.
Bridge begins with the capture of Rudolf Abel, a Soviet operative posing as an artist and member of the hollow-nickel network (the movie makes it appear he worked alone). This is about 1957. The FBI’s evidence is pretty damning; Abel has the gear plus he’s illegally residing in the US. He speaks with an Irish brogue (technically he was born in northern England) which probably helped mask his Soviet citizenship. This being the Fifties, before Guantanamo, the Federal government decides it’s best give Abel a competent defense. The outcome would be guilty regardless, the Feds just want to put up a show to the world demonstrating the “fairness” of the American justice system.
Enter Donovan. The trailer is misleading. He’s just an insurance lawyer. Not really. Donovan was with a firm that worked on insurance lawsuits. During WWII and for a while after, he was an assistant to Justice Robert H Jackson at the Nuremberg trails against the Nazis. Charges with a death penalty sentence were nothing new to him. Obviously Donovan and Abel lose, American paranoia over the Soviet Union is irrational. The FBI failing to have a warrant? Not important. Abel is spared the electric chair for a sentence covering the remainder of his natural life.
Fast forward several years (1960), something Spielberg fails to tell the audience. A former Air Force pilot named Francis Gary Powers is flying his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in had been a routine intelligence gathering mission. For years, the CIA and military contractor were confident the Soviets would never have the means to shoot one down with their “primitive” weaponry. Well, they do in 1960. The CIA tries to cover it up as a weather plane from NASA going off course, certain of Powers’s death and the aircraft’s destruction. No dice. The plane is mostly intact for the Soviets to dissect and Powers is very much alive. He is interrogated/tortured, tried and sentenced to a decade in a Soviet prison.
Donovan returns to aid the CIA’s negotiations to swap Abel for Powers. East Germany’s Berlin wall-building complicates the situation. Then an American graduate student named Fred Pryor gets arrested by GDR soldiers, prompting the Soviets and East Germans to pull a bait-and-switch on America: Abel for Pryor, they keep Powers. Our hero, America’s favorite two-time Oscar® winner, won’t have this. The remainder of the film is how he succeeds in getting back two Americans for one Soviet.
Tom Hanks does pull off a great performance. I still kept waiting for those Hanksisms like when he raises his voice to spazz a la Woody, “You…are…a…spy!” Nah, he just stays this uber calm, master diplomat, even when he’s being robbed by East German teenagers for his overcoat. He probably also plays down Donovan’s own patriotism and/or flaws, the real guy wasn’t big on racial integration when he became the head of New York’s BOE. The movie ends with an oddly factual epilog too.
Now the quick Hollywood v. History element, or calling bullshit on Spielberg because many Americans will lazily believe the whole thing as fact.
- Abel’s time in the US was a failure. He didn’t score anything which could compromise American security and he failed to recruit anyone willing to sell secrets to the USSR. Why the KGB was willing to take him back is a mystery. The FBI only caught him due to another Soviet operative accidentally spending a hollow nickel. Eventually the nickel was discovered by a paperboy. From there it worked its way up to the FBI’s attention. Hoover’s FBI couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel let alone catch a real threat.
- The U-2 incident did embarrass Eisenhower during the waning days of his presidency. Soviet leader Kruschev had been accusing America of these spy missions. Ike always denied them. Hell, thanks to the U-2, he knew there was no “missile gap” yet lacked the courage to tell the American people, the golfing president continued to let the country feed into its own hysteria. Anyway, Ike had to change his tune with Kruschev presented Powers. Suddenly, the U-2 existed! The egotistical Orangemen band took this name due to America spying on everybody. Sadly, this have been proven very true lately.
- In the Nineties, I read David Halberstam’s The Fifties. It contained a chapter about the U-2. The pilots never trusted their CIA handlers. In Bridge, the instructor shows how the plane’s self-destruct mechanism is set to go off in 70 seconds. Powers may not have ever armed it because he and his fellow aviators suspected the CIA had it set to go off immediately to guarantee no prisoners.
Putting aside the holes, Bridge remains a good film. It’s not Hanks nor Spielberg’s best. It won’t get any Oscar nods, they released it too early, the Academy can only remember what is in theaters from Christmas to late January. I liked Bridge for the chance to see something other than the usual tent-pole offerings I attend. I think casual fans of drama, History and Tom Hanks will enjoy it too.
Alamo Extras: A silent movie clip showing an early spy story; some English big band doing a comedy bit about Russia; trailer for the movie Spy in the Sky; Madness’ video “Uncle Sam”; toy commercial for Ideal’s fighter jet console (pretty expensive then); Boney M’s video “Rasputin”; Spy v. Spy cartoon; Zlad!’s video “Elektronik Supersonik”; and for reason’s unknown, the turgid Joanna Newsom video “Divers” again.
