Bridge of Spies

Written by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, this film crackles with crispness and clarity. Director Steven Spielberg knows how to keep viewers on the edge of their seats; case in point, Bridge of Spies' opening, which will leave you waiting for a big explosion or defining crash of the kind most often seen in espionage tales. But what happens instead isn't a prototypical setting-into-motion plot device but more a peeling of the proverbial onion skin, moving the plot through the first of many curves and hard lefts.

The period set design bottles 1950s/60s New York's essence, as well as Berlin in the latter half of the movie. If there's any quibble, it's that there's so much story to pack in that a few characters get the short shrift, notably Donovan's wife (ably played by Amy Ryan) and one of his law firm partners (Alan Alda). But ultimately one of the most compelling things about Bridge of Spies is that it truly feels of a different time, devoid of the usual pointed emotional cues and heavy backgrounding that clutter most movies these days. Which isn't to say that you won't be pulled into this spy drama, because you will be. Or that you'll figure out what's going to happen and what the film is about, because you won't. What you will find is a movie stripped bare to its essentials: the retelling of a story based on real-life events about how an insurance lawyer became instrumental in negotiating one of the most important spy-swaps of the Cold War.