Two Very Different Spy Movies: "SPECTRE", "Bridge of Spies" // Movie Reviews

SPECTRE

Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond has been frustratingly uneven. While I stand by my opinion that he is the best Bond since Sean Connery, and possibly even better, the individual movies haven't been as consistent as his legendary predecessor's were. Of the four Craig era films two are among the best in the franchise's fifty plus year history (2012's Skyfall might be the best of all time), one (Quantum of Solace) was a complete disaster, and now the latest, SPECTRE, while not a disaster, is middling at best. 

Craig has complained that he wants out of the role he's grown tired of playing (too bad for us), but I can't say that he comes off here like an actor phoning it in for the paycheck. No, the problem isn't the leading man, or any of his supporting players, who are all given plenty to do and do it well (unlike in many Bond films, 007 here isn't a one man army). The problem is a script that tries to be too clever by half, setting up a backstory between Bond and his villain du jour (Christoph Waltz) that made me think of Austin Powers; and when a Bond movie starts to remind you of it's spoof, something is wrong. I also found myself confused a bit about whether there was a back story concerning Bond and his latest love interest (Léa Seydoux), which made me wonder what creepy direction things might go into, which thankfully they didn't. There is also an attempt to tie all the previous three films together which, while not implausible or even undesirable, comes off as an after thought rather than a strong driving impulse of the native. 

The ever glamorous Monica Bellucci, is well, the ever glamorous Monica Bellucci, in what amounts to an extended cameo. Ralph Fiennes, Naomi Harris and Ben Whishaw show that their respective characters of M, Moneypenny and Q can do more than supply exposition and light hearted sexual tension, and we get the most indestructible adversary since Jaws in the Roger Moore days (Dave Bautista). The ingredients are all there, along with the spectacular action and stunts you expect from a Bond movie. But the plot, motivations and relationships are murky and the running time too long, with gaps in the action that become a drag.

So, SPECTRE is not terrible by any degree, with many things to recommend it, but over all nonessential for any one other than a Bond true believer. My recommendation is to either see it in IMAX (which I did not) to get the full impact of the action set pieces or else wait for the video.

Bridge of Spies

Forty years ago Steven Spielberg was the young hot shot director who was changing how Hollywood made, distributed and marketed movies. He, along with George Lucas are credited, for better or worse, with inventing the big budget summer block buster. He's had his share of Christmas season Oscar bait films over the years as well. But now the Young Turk is an elder statesman, with newbie directors such as J.J. Abrams creating homages to his style like people once affectionately aped Hitchcock or John Ford. 

But even when he was young, Spielberg, like his colleague Lucas, always had one foot in the past while while making the films of tomorrow. They may have used the latest in special effects but their stories often harkened back to the days of movie serials like Buck Rogers, and projected a certain innocents of youth. Spielberg has been criticized, in fact, by the likes of director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam for his overly optimistic take on life, specifically for giving his Holocaust epic Schindler's List a victorious ending when the Sheol is really about humanity's failure. 

Spielberg is a bit of a throw back in other ways as well. You could accuse him of being a typical Hollywood liberal, but typical for 1946 or 1962. His heroes recall the likes of Fredric March's Al Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives, or Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. These were men of the Left who believed in fair play, fighting for the underdog and that if the system doesn't work it's not because the system itself is wrong, but because the people running it have forgotten the ideals on which the nation was built. One could argue that this is not the spirit of contemporary liberal or progressive thought. People of the Left today, broadly speaking, see the system as the problem and believe that it needs to be fundamentally transformed. It was flawed from its inception and is irredeemable, so that appealing to original intent or the founding spirit is self defeating. 

Spielberg's latest Oscar season offering is just such a throwback to the earlier form of American progressivism. Bridge of Spies tells the, more or less, true story of  James Donovan (Tom Hanks), a New York insurance lawyer recruited for the unenviable task of defending a captured Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War. He's honest, competent, had experience at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II: just the guy to give the "appearance" that the accused is being given a fair trial. Only Donovan doesn't know that this is a show trial. He thinks that he's really there to win the case. His vigorous defense annoys the judge and brings him under the suspicion of the government. While he doesn't get his client off, he does manage to talk the judge out of giving him the electric chair. Who knows, Donovan reasons, maybe the Russians will capture one of our spies some day and we'll be able to make a swap. And don't you know? that's exactly what happens. 

As I wrote, Donovan's zealous defense of the accused spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) runs him afoul of the CIA who sets a tail on him. He's confronted on the street on a rainy night, invited to a local bar for a drink by an agent (Scott Shepherd) who then attempts to extract information from the lawyer. When Donovan reminds agent Hoffman of lawyer client privilege, he is told to not be such a "boy scout" and remember that there's no rule book to be followed; all's fair in this Cold War game. To wit Donovan asks a seemingly random question about Hoffman's ethnic roots, correctly guessing that he's of German extraction. He continues:

My name's Donovan, Irish, both sides, mother and father. I'm Irish, you're German, but what makes us both Americans? Just one thing, one, one, one: the rule book. We call it the Constitution and we agree to the rules and that's what makes us Americans and it's all that makes us Americans so don't tell me there's no rule book, and don't nod at me like that you son of a bitch.

For Hanks' Donovan the problem isn't that America is inherently unfair or on the wrong side of history, but that people are too quick to forget about the values that make us Americans to begin with. People in times of a national security crisis, like during the Cold War or, as is meant to be implied, in today's post 9/11 world are too quick to trample over the rights enshrined in the Constitution to ensure a measure of perceived security (a similar point is alluded to throughout the new Bond movie as well, which is about the only thing these two spy movies have in common. That and a spectacular scene involving the crash of a spy plane). 

This is arguably a true point, but also terribly old fashioned. As is a scene showing Donovan taking his appeal to overturn Abel's conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. The presentation of the noble lawyer in his formal dress, in the hallowed halls giving a stirring statement on how American reliance on the rule of law is the moral high ground that separates us from our Soviet adversaries is straight out of Frank Capra. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. Unlike Mr. Gilliam I don't mind a little corn once in a while, especially if I believe it to be true in spite of its corniness.  But it does make me wonder if the message still resonates in the culture, and if the only reason a film like this still gets made in Hollywood is because a director of the clout of Spielberg made it and that there are still enough nostalgic Baby Boomers around to buy tickets. 

We are living in a culture right now where students at major universities are ready to jettison free speech in exchange for something much less earth shaking than national security--their own emotional security. We also have one of the leading presidential candidates of a major party who indeed buys into the idea that the nation is flawed from it's roots, and so calls her founding principles into question. The Constitution is a political and legal document, not a sacred one, true. It can and maybe should be altered. The foundational principle that we are a nation of laws and not men should under gird any amendments or revisions of the law though. Even the Pope, in his address to Congress, referenced how important it is for us to remember the guiding principles that have shaped our nation from the beginning. They always need to be purified, refined, and reexamined, but without them we forget who we are. We are more likely then to be swept away in all sorts of directions we may later regret. 

While the film does dabble in more than a little moral equivalency at times, and calls into question whether we were over reacting to the Soviet threat, its still clear that the U.S.A. wears the White Hat and the Eastern Block, if not a Black Hat, at least a Grey one. Even with these qualifications, Bridge of Spies does present a rather traditional vision of American idealism: that we base our system on the rule of law and not of men or of an individual man or woman. But this is one ideal I'm not sure the emerging generation shares.

The second part of the film deals with the prisoner exchange envisioned by Donovan. Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), pilot of the U2 spy plane is shot down over Russia and captured. Meanwhile an American student (Will Rogers) gets detained in East Berlin just as the wall goes up, and is accused of being a spy. Donovan wants to free both, the CIA is only interested in Powers. So the second half deals less with high minded ideals and more in good old fashioned-make the audience wonder how he's gonna pull this off-suspense. And the suspense is dulled a bit by the fact that we know how it ends, or at least anyone who bothers to check Wikipedia will know how it turns out. 

In the end, a solid, well produced and acted film, as one would expect from a master filmmaker. It's also probably one of the last of its kind, at least for the foreseeable future.