well-made

Rating: 8/10 (18 April 2016)

It's 1957 Brooklyn. Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested for being a Soviet spy. Insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is pushed to defend him. Despite popular pressure, Donovan fights to prevent Abel's execution. When U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is shoot down over the Soviet Union, CIA director Allen Dulles recruits Donovan to test out the prisoner exchange idea as a private citizen. American student Frederic Pryor gets imprisoned on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. Donovan decides to hold out for both Americans' release.
Director Steven Spielberg delivers a well-made movie. However, there is a lack of tension for most of the movie. Spielberg needs to ramp up the danger to Donovan. He needs to gin up more danger to his job and to his family. The shooting into his house is fine. I expected a scene of his wife getting confronted. Having said that, other scenes seem too heavy-handed especially the last few scenes back home. Spielberg is also putting in too much of a glare which gives the movie a dreamy quality. Instead, it needs a darker, harsher, and scarier tone. Tom Hanks is a bit too calm. He needs to be scared in more times. The time he's confronted by the street youths in East Berlin is a prime example. It needs to be shocking and it needs to come out of nowhere. Instead, it's laid out before it happens and it's a source of comedy afterward. The tension is never too high. It could have been a darker, scarier scene.