Depending on who you ask, Steven Spielberg‘s "Bridge Of Spies" is either a refreshing throwback to a particular brand of classic filmmaking, or not, but we kinda liked the superbly crafted dramatic thriller and morality tale (read our review). And while the movie won’t go wide until next week, a few new clips will let you in on the intrigue.
Based on a true story, the film follows an insurance lawyer from Brooklyn who is tasked with defending a Soviet spy caught in the U.S. and then finds himself further embroiled in global politics when things take an unexpected twist. Placed against the backdrop of the Cold War, it’s that tension that informs the energy of the picture.
“My dad always said, ‘Don’t worry about this, there’s never going to be a war, nobody is that insane.’ But I never believed it. I actually felt that everybody was insane when I was a kid," the director told EW. "And I felt that grown-ups were the most insane people on the planet and would do something as stupid and evil as start a thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And as we all know now from history, it was narrowly averted.”
However, there was another lesson that spoke to Spielberg, one that emerged in his research. “I had no idea that there was a Soviet spy named Rudolf Abel who had been working for over a decade in this country for the Soviet Union,” he said. “I had no idea that there was a man named James B. Donovan, who was an insurance attorney but formerly an associate prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, who was called into service to show the world that we represent everybody. Everybody gets a fair shake. Those moral themes resonated with me, especially having come off ‘Lincoln.’ ”
So, it sounds like both an big piece of entertainment with some important thematic material to chew on. In other words, classic Spielberg. "Bridge Of Spies" opens on October 16th.
