Not bad but a bit boring

Rating: 5/10 (13 April 2016)

I'm not really a fan of Tom Hanks but in this film, he gave a good, albeit not brilliant, performance as Donovan, who suffered public scorn to do what he thought was right. I went into this film unaware that it was based on real live events but at the end, it showed some of Donovan's accomplishments after these events and I was impressed by the number of people he saved; 9703. However in the film, I wasn't hugely impressed by Tom Hanks, although he's by no means a bad actor. Supporting actor Mark Rylance was good, perhaps better than Hanks, and had some funny moments particularly with his main phrase "Would it help?"
I'm not entirely sure if this was meant to be a funny film but it got a laugh out of the audience a fair few times. There were scenes showing Abel's indifference to his situation and Donovan had some amusing lines here and there, but it seemed that the films tone was supposed to be a bit more serious and the humorous parts ruined that slightly. That said, the funny scenes weren't bad, but would probably have been better suited to a more humorous film.
There were some things I liked such as the friendship that developed between Abel and Donovan over the course of the film. Their relationship was the films strong point in my opinion. Another part that I liked was at the end, when Donovan was on the train and saw some people climbing over a fence. This links back to an earlier scene in Berlin, where some people were trying to scale a wall and got shot down, which is a good contrast between Berlin and New York.
I thought the judge was a jerk and it seemed to me that he was letting his prejudice against Abel influence his decision in the courtroom, so I was glad when Donovan managed to talk him out of giving Abel the death sentence. To me, the judges behavior showed that some people can't be trusted with power, but it was nice to see that he wasn't totally corrupt, so perhaps I misjudged him.
This film had a lot of talk about negotiation and politics and since I have little interest in either - largely because I don't trust politicians - it wasn't really my kind of movie. However, I wouldn't call it a bad film. Tom Hanks has some good speeches and there's a funny line here and there, so if you like movies about what goes on behind the scenes in a war, instead of focusing on shooting and explosions, you'll probably like this film. There is a bit of shooting and blowing things up - specifically a plane used to spy on the enemy - but it's kept to a minimum, focusing mainly on Donovan's struggle to help Abel.