Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies.
The brilliance of Tom Hanks combines with stunning direction by Steven Spielberg to turn a story with a fairly predictable outcome into a mouth-watering Cold War drama.
The moment that US spy plane pilot Frances Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) enters the movie is the moment that anyone with a cursory
knowledge of Soviet-American history will realise how this absorbing tale ends. But it doesn't matter because Bridge of Spies is such a master class of film making, with a compelling twist involving stranded US student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers).
Hanks plays James Donovan, a real-life New York insurance lawyer with a background in World War II espionage and the Nuremburg trials of leading Nazis.
He is chosen for the unenviable task of defending Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy arrested in New York in 1957 at the height of the Cold War when an exchange of nuclear missiles looked a distinct possibility.
Abel, played by Mark Rylance, presents such an absorbing character that you almost want Donovan's gritty and spirited defence to succeed.
