Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

Based fairly closely on real events, Bridge of Spies relates the story of a lawyer charged with defending a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War. There is also the parallel story of the capture of spy plane pilot Gary Powers in the Soviet Union, and the two stories eventually merge as the lawyer shuttles back and forth between different factions in East Berlin, trying to arrange an exchange of the respective prisoners.
Tom Hanks does wounded nobility well as the lawyer, but the film's stand-out performer is undoubtedly Mark Rylance as the diffident Soviet spy, quietly resigned to his fate. That the Coen brothers were behind the screenplay helps a lot with the dialogue and goes some way towards counterbalancing Spielberg's tendency to overdramatise and get sentimental, along with the usual cliches, such as that anywhere behind the Iron Curtain simply has to be always be snowbound. It does start to drag at nearly two and a half hours, but there are enough handsome setpieces to perk up interest at the right intervals that the film ends up in credit overall.

7/10