‘Bridge of Spies’ Trailer: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s Cold War Thriller Looks Mighty Cool
When Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg last made a war film, they produced Saving Private Ryan, which was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and features what’s widely considered one of the greatest battle scenes ever captured on film. They’ve worked together a couple times since, including on Catch Me If You Can, one of the best movies of either man’s career, but Bridge of Spies might be considered a kind of spiritual sequel to Ryan. That was Hanks and Spielberg’s World War II picture. This is their Cold War one.
It tells the story of James B. Donovan, an insurance lawyer from Brooklyn who was chosen to defend a Russian spy discovered in the United States in the early 1960s. Donovan had to navigate the dangerous waters of international diplomacy (not to mention accusations of being a traitor to his country) while negotiating for the release of an American fighter pilot whose plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. The film also stars Alan Alda, Mark Rylance, and Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife Mary.
And it all looks great here: the mood, the tension, the cinematography, the enormous stakes, and lines (from a screenplay by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, in their first collaboration with Spielberg) like “Everyone deserves a defense. Every person matters.” Bridge of Spies opens in the fall, so it’ll likely be positioned as a big Oscar movie. If the film lives up to this trailer, it should definitely be in the running for awards at the end of the year.
Bridge of Spies opens in theaters on October 16.