Archives for November 2015

  I really enjoyed Bridge of Spies. It's an intimate period drama, mining the tension and paranoia of early 1960s Cold War. Co-written by the Coen Brothers, it's a cracking good piece of storytelling and it punctuates the seriousness with plenty of humor. Most interesting, the film subtly plays with the parallel between that era and current day; just as some Cold Warriors wanted to (and did) ignore the Constitution in the name of protecting the U.S., so have some current voices advocated lessening privacy and due process protections in the face of terrorist threats. At one point Tom Hanks (playing a small-town lawyer thrust onto the world stage) says to a CIA operative, "you know what makes us all Americans? The Constitution." Hanks is hyper-authentic and charming, channeling his inner Jimmy Stewart to portray extreme human decency, even when pressured by smarmy government operartives. Good flick.