Video review: "Bridge of Spies"

In such an outstanding year for movies, "Bridge of Spies" is the sort of film that tends to get overlooked. It doesn't have a flashy subject, or the hot new thing as a star or director, and it's a historical piece about an embarrassing Cold War event that many people would just as soon forget.

It got an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, but I don't think anyone considers it a serious contender. Nor should it be, but it's a very good picture that deserves some attention on video.

Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan, an insurance lawyer from Brooklyn who finds himself thrown into the kettle of geopolitical politics. First it's being selected to represent Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Ryland, in a wry performance that got its own Oscar nod), basically because nobody else wants the job. He tries his hardest -- which annoys some of his colleagues -- and convinces the government not to execute Abel since they might need him someday.

Someday arrives a few years later when American pilot Gary Powers is shot down over the Soviet Union in the infamous U-2 incident and held prisoner. Donovan is sent to Berlin to negotiate an exchange, Abel for Powers, but in the overheated era of nuclear standoff, the government can't officially acknowledge his role as their representative.

He's essentially freelancing it with his rear end exposed, making daily trips across the Berlin Wall with briefcase in hand to haggle with a bizarre array of Russians and Germans. Complicating things, the East Germans have captured an American student on trumped-up spying changes. Donovan takes it upon himself to free him too: "Two for one" is his mantra.

It's a potboiler political thriller, more about the threat of violence and dire consequences than the actual depiction of them. Director Steven Spielberg and screenwriters Matt Charman, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen turn the screws at just the right pressure, with Hanks spectacular as always as the well-meaning everyman thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

Bonus features are OK, though Spielberg shows his typical disregard for filmmaker commentary tracks. There are four making-of mini-documentaries: "Berlin 1961: Re-creating The Divide," "U-2 Spy Plane," "Spy Swap: Looking Back On The Final Act" and "A Case Of The Cold War: Bridge of Spies."

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Review: "Bridge of Spies"

I've always enjoyed history, and am particularly tickled by the incongruous little stuff that doesn't break into the public consciousness. Like the Fourth Crusade, which set out to retake Jerusalem from the Saracen horde, but instead sacked the allied city of Constantinople to plunder its great wealth. Or the slaves who rose up against their masters aboard the ship "Amistad" and won their freedom before the Supreme Court, some of whom went on to become slave traders themselves.

History buffs, or those who just like a good geopolitical yarn, will probably enjoy "Bridge of Spies" as much as I did. The latest collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks, it’s the curious story-behind-the-story of the U-2 incident of 1960, in which the Russians shot down a U.S. spy plane, heating up the Cold War to the point nuclear war seemed possible.

Hanks plays James B. Donovan, a respected but unheralded insurance attorney from Brooklyn who found himself in the unlikely role of negotiating for the return of the American pilot.

He had previously represented a Soviet spy caught by the CIA, Rudolf Abel, and convinced the authorities not to execute him since they might need to use him one day for leverage. Donovan’s prescience was rewarded by being tossed into the cauldron of geopolitical intrigue, making cloak-and-dagger forays across the Berlin Wall as an unofficial negotiator for his country.

The screenplay by young Matt Charman was punched up by Oscar-winning veterans Joel and Ethan Coen, and is essentially divided into two parts. Roughly the first half is about Donovan’s representation of Abel, which causes strain in both his professional and personal lives. He becomes a public pariah for doing more than offering a token defense, even taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The second half is the negotiations in Berlin.

He comes to find a grudging respect for Abel, who is portrayed by Mark Rylance in a strong, restrained performance. Abel is completely guilty, an incongruous figure born in England who speaks with a strong British lilt, raised in Russia and a devoted patriot. Posing as a painter, he refuses to share information or acknowledge he’s a spy, though he does not take great pains to conceal it.

Donovan seems bewildered by the man’s preternatural calm, repeatedly asking him if he’s worried or scared about being put to death for espionage. “Would it help?” is Abel’s stoic reply.

In turn, Donovan’s wife (Amy Ryan), law partner (Alan Alda) and even the judge (Dakin Matthews) are perplexed and bothered by his diligence in defending a traitor who divulged secrets to America’s greatest adversary. He resolutely points out that since Abel is not American he cannot be a traitor, but is an honorable enemy who deserves to be treated as such.

Flash forward a few years. American pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down and captured while flying an ultra-secret U-2 plane. It causes great embarrassment to the U.S., as Powers failed to self-destruct his craft or kill himself with poison per orders. The CIA taps Donovan to set up an exchange: Abel for Powers.

The wrinkle is that the East Germans have also captured a young American student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), and are holding him on trumped-up charges. Instructed by his CIA handler (Scott Shepherd) to concentrate on the pilot and forget the student, Donovan takes it upon himself to enter tense three-way negotiations between America, the USSR and its young German satellite country. His goal: two for one.

It’s a typically skillful performance by Hanks, playing a man out of his depth who compensates by rigging the game according to rules he understands.

The film doesn’t really get deep inside Donovan’s head, but “Bridge of Spies” is less character study than political thriller. It’s about spotlighting a key piece of little-known history, and somehow even makes lawyerly negotiations enlivening. That’s a masterful bit of cinematic subterfuge.

Review: "Unbroken"

“Unbroken” is the sort of story that if it weren’t true, people would dismiss it as Hollywood hoo-ha. But Louis “Louie” Zamperini really lived this life: Olympic athlete who competed at the 1936 games in Berlin, WWII bombardier whose plane crashed into the Pacific, surviving 47 days at sea before being captured and subjected to two years of torment as a prisoner of war.

This movie, which I think one of the most powerful of the year, hasn’t received much love from other critics, and I find that puzzling. Is it the presence of Anjelina Jolie as director, and a certain snootiness towards glamorous movie stars stepping behind the camera? If so, I’ll just remind them people said the same thing about Clint Eastwood and Mike Nichols … and they didn’t turn out too bad.

To my mind, Jolie acquits herself splendidly, hitting the emotional high and low notes just right, as well as staging a few daring action scenes. Clearly, she’s got a future behind the camera if she carries out her threat to abandon acting.

Chiding of the screenplay seems more well-placed. The script has some big names on it – Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese, William Nicholson – as well as being based on a book by Laura Hillenbrand, who also penned the splendid “Seabiscuit.”

But it is a fairly conventional narrative presentation. And, as others have pointed it, it almost seems to combine elements of three famous Oscar-winning films into one: the Olympics sequence from “Chariots of Fire,” the lifeboat part from “Life of Pi” and the POW stuff from “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” 

Oh well. The historical record is what it is. The movie also truncates the latter portion of Hillenbrand’s book, which deals with Zamperini’s (unsurprisingly) difficult transition to civilian life and religious awakening.

Jack O’Connell is solid as Zamperini, but I do think this sort of movie might have been better served by having a more recognizable actor in the main role. Since the screenplay doesn’t really attempt to get inside the character’s head, but observes his trials and tribulations from without, audiences might have a harder time connecting emotionally with him. We need more of a touchstone.

The supporting cast is terrific. I especially liked Domhnall Gleeson as Phillips, the pilot of the bomber that crashes into the ocean, who has a sort of reserved grace, and Jai Courtney and Garrett Hedlund as fellow POWs, who know they can’t help him directly when the guards are beating him to a pulp, but cheer on silently.

If I have one serious complaint with the movie, it’s Japanese singer/actor Miyavi as the sadistic head guard the prisoners refer to as “The Bird,” because he sees everything. Most of what’s depicted really happened – the Bird was sent into hiding as a war criminal after Japan’s surrender.

OK, so he’s a bad guy. But the film turns him into a cloying, effeminate monster who sidles up to his charges and whispers in their ear before delivering a beating. His eyes even look odd, like he’s been made up with excessive mascara or something. The end result is the Bird feels like a cartoon, much like the Michael Fassbender character in “12 Years a Slave.”

It’s like they’re trying to cram all the evil of an era into a single figure, and it rings false.

Still, “Unbroken” was one of the most riveting cinematic experiences I had this year. The lesson of Louie Zamperini isn’t that he was tougher and braver than everyone else, but that this power to withstand desperate challenges resides in all of us if we can find it.

Video review: "Inside Llewyn Davis"

The biggest question I had about the Coen Brothers’ latest work was not “What?” but “Why?”

Why did they feel compelled to make this movie? Like another fairly recent film of theirs I was cool to, “A Serious Man,” “Inside Llewyn Davis” seems like a movie the co-writer/directors made for themselves rather than for any hypothetical audience. It’s all well and good for artists to primarily please themselves, but that doesn’t mean we need to see it.

Set in New York City in the early 1960s when the folk music scene that produced Bob Dylan was germinating, “Davis” is the story of somebody who never makes it. Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) is a sad sack and a lout who sponges off his friends for everything, even a place to sleep. But he’s a genuinely gifted singer – and so is Isaac, who skillfully and wistfully performs all his songs himself.

Llewyn stumbles from here to there, getting in and out of scrapes, including a perilous pregnancy that threatens the marriage of two fellow singers (Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake). Occasionally he lands a gig or an audition, but we sense – and so does he – that Llewyn just isn’t destined for the big time.

The story gets interrupted for a long, strange road trip across the country so Llewyn can play for a club manager who apparently doesn’t even know he’s coming. It’s filled with loopy Coen-esque characters, such as John Goodman as a whiny jazzman, but Llewyn doesn’t have much reason for being there.

You can say the same of the movie about him.

Extras are quite scant, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. You only get “Inside ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’” a making-of documentary. It does feature the notoriously publicity-averse filmmakers plus all the major cast members. It just would’ve been nice to see some deleted scenes and perhaps a commentary track.

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Review: "Inside Llewyn Davis"

The Coen brothers are among my favorite filmmakers, but over the last decade or so they’ve run hot and cold … or I have.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is their latest oh-so-sober effort, a dark and dreary portrait of a wayward folk singer trying to make it in the early 1960s. It’s shot in muted colors, contains little in the way of their trademark ironic humor, and doesn’t appear to be about anything than it superficially is.

It feels more like an exercise than a movie.

The film is wonderfully crafted, as is everything by Joel and Ethan Coen, and the music is often quite tremendous, especially Oscar Isaac in the title role. If you ask me if I wouldn’t mind owning the soundtrack, the answer would be yes.

But when I ask myself the question every filmmaker should before they start a new project -- “What is this movie really about, and why does it need to exist?” -- I’m afraid I come up empty.

The point, if there is one, is that serious artists who refuse to compromise their craft usually end up discarded and forgotten instead of celebrated. It’s only the lucky and the malleable who make it in the music biz. This comes as startling news, I’m sure, to exactly no one.

Llewyn is literally a man without a home, trundling his guitar case and duffle bag from apartment to apartment in New York City, where he crashes on the couches of his friends. The word “friend” is relative in Llewyn’s case, since a relationship with this man only flows in one direction. Food, accommodations, emotional support, invitations for gigs and a meager paycheck -- Llewyn only takes, not gives.

The one place where pours out his soul is behind a microphone. Isaac has a terrific voice and musicianship, and I loved the fact that the Coens actually let the actors perform the songs from start to finish, instead of that montage-and-segue thing you usually get.

He’s facing a new crisis when Jean (Carey Mulligan), a friend and one-half of the husband-and-wife singing team of Jean & Jim, announces that she’s pregnant, possibly with Llewyn’s baby. He has to come up with the money for the abortion, in addition to concealing this fact from Jim (Justin Timberlake).

The rest of the story wanders as Llewyn does. He ends up on other couches in other apartments, encountering other would-be folk singers and their enablers. Among those he meets is Troy Nelson (Stark Sands), an Army soldier who sings during his furloughs. Everyone adores him, and he certainly has talent, but Llewyn aptly wonders if Troy possesses higher brain function.

During one long, strange trek to Chicago to meet a producer, Llewyn finds himself ensconced inside a car sharing a ride with Roland Turner, a crippled jazzman played by John Goodman, who needles Llewyn that those in his profession “play all the notes” instead of just three or four chords. His largely mute driver, Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), seems like he wandered in from the “On the Road” film adaptation.

There’s one terrific, heartbreaking scene where Llewyn finally gets to audition for that producer (F. Murray Abraham). The man clearly recognizes there’s a bonafide artiste sitting in front of him, but crass concerns prevail: “I don’t hear any money there,” he says, less a judgment than an apology.

Here’s a good Rorschach test to see if you’ll be drawn to “Inside Llewyn Davis”: What did you think of the Coens’ “A Serious Man”? If you were put off by that impenetrable rumination, which to me played like an inner dialogue inside the directors’ heads, then this new film will feel like more of the same. If you loved “A Serious Man,” you’ll probably enjoy this one, and we can find something else to talk about.

Video review: "True Grit"

The Coen brothers' version of "True Grit" goes completely sideways from the 1969 film starring John Wayne. It is not really a remake of that iconic Western, but a new interpretation of the novel by Charles Portis.

Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn is not likely to be confused with Wayne's. Though both played the one-eyed, over-the-hill lawman with a penchant for shooting first and asking questions whenever he felt like it, but the similarities end there.

Bridges' character seems not merely ill-tempered but downright morally indifferent to the violence he perpetrates. The only real difference between his actions and those of the men he hunts down is that he has the protection of the law on his side.

Hailee Steinfeld is a revelation as Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old farm girl who hires Cogburn to capture -- and preferably kill -- the man who murdered her father. Mattie is smart as hell and even more stubborn, and insists on tagging along. Along the trail they throw in with a Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) with similar motives but very divergent sensibilities.

With its deliberately stilted, formal dialogue and black moodiness, the new "True Grit" is an entirely novel take on familiar material.

Video extras are a bit pokey. The DVD version comes with four featurettes about the cast, the costumes, re-creating Fort Smith and the character of Mattie.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and you get three more featurettes about the weapons of the Western genre, Charles Portis and the film's bleak cinematography. It does at least come with a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

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Review: "True Grit"

The Coen brothers' remake of John Wayne's signature role seemed like a bad idea. And yet, despite not departing significantly from the 1969 film in plot, they've managed to put an entirely new and highly engaging twist on "True Grit" in terms of tone and mood.

Wayne's outing as one-eyed drunkard/lawman Rooster Cogburn -- he won an Oscar for it, and Jeff Bridges probably will get nominated, too -- was a G-rated picture of high adventure and comedy. The Coen writing/directing duo, Joel and Ethan ("No Country for Old Men"), deliver an unsurprisingly darker version, both in the quantity of the violence and the timbre of the humor.

(Although, how this paean of bloody shootings, stabbings, hangings and severings got a PG-13 rating is another testament to the vagaries of the MPAA.)

Perhaps the Coens' "True Grit" is best thought of not as a remake of the Wayne film, but an entirely new interpretation of the novel by Charles Portis. It is told from the perspective of an older woman remembering the seminal experience of her life at the age of 14 -- her recollections no doubt colored by the passage of time and some intrusion of imagination.

Mattie Ross is surely the most obstinate, opinionated girl from Yell County, Arkansas. After her father is shot down by a no-account halfwit named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), she attends to all the affairs, including transport of the body and haggling with a local businessman over the disposition of his mules.

Mattie is played by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld in a film debut that immediately announces the arrival of a young but formidable talent. Her clear-eyed, head-on performance is so immediate and pure that we do more than adore Mattie; we respect the hell out of the little son of a gun.

Set on hiring a U.S. Marshal to hunt down Chaney, she chooses Cogburn because he is reputed to be the meanest. We first meet him being grilled in a courtroom by a defense lawyer who demands to know how many men he has shot in the line of duty. "Shot or killed?" Cogburn lazily retorts, though it doesn't feel like bluster.

Bridges goes completely sideways from The Duke in portraying Cogburn, whom he inhabits with a slouching, slurring, nonchalant competence. Rooster is overly fond of whiskey, and is the first to admit he has grown too old and fat for this line of work, yet there's no denying he gets the job done -- even if it means waylaying culprits rather than arresting them, and arranging facts to fit the outcome.

Mattie tags along through sheer stubbornness; she wants to see the job done, and if possible pull the trigger on Chaney herself. Joining them is La Bouef (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger who wears flamboyant buckskin and might seem boastful if he didn't have the goods to back it up.

La Bouef has been hunting Chaney on another warrant for months, and throws in with them, despite Cogburn's constant insults and the presence of a girl. There's also a thrilling, slightly creepy hint of attraction between the Ranger and Mattie, despite at least 20 years age difference.

The Coens' world feels rich and detailed; the characters do and say things not just to further the plot but make us believe they have an expansive history of which we're only seeing a tiny slice.

Cogburn talks while he rides, ruminating over ex-wives and the Green Frog, a tavern he used to own and run. He circles rope around his bedroll to keep snakes out, which sounds like nonsense -- until you Google it and find out it works. (Their soft underbellies don't like the feel.)

The language of the dialogue is comically formal and stiff, with hardly a contraction: "The ground is too hard. If these men wanted a decent burial, they should have got killed in the summer," Cogburn notes.

But the Coens, who love to play around with the conventions of film genres, aren't just goofing: They're setting the audience up.

There's a scene about an hour in of sudden, horrible violence, and we sense the filmmakers have been easing a noose around our necks with the tongue-in-cheek humor and stilted talk. That sharp bloodletting is them jerking our heads back, like the snap of a hangman plying his trade.

Remake, re-imagining, call it what you will -- "True Grit" is truly the Coens' best movie in a decade.

3.5 stars out of four

Catching up with "A Serious Man"

So I've got a free weekend and I'm trying to catch up on some movies I missed, starting with "A Serious Man." I knew I had to see it at some point, because I simply must experience all things Coen Bros.

The "Variety" critic aptly described this as the sort of movie you get to make after you've won an Oscar. It's a loose retelling of the Book of Job, recast to the Midwest of the 1960s and with a distinctly Jewish point of few, starring a bunch of unknowns. It's a contemplative tale, darkly humorous and often vexing.

The protagonist is Larry Gropnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a youngish physics professor who's awaiting a chance for tenure when his whole life falls apart, bit by bit. One day his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) announces that she wants a divorce, and that she's in love with Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed, who has a voice like gold dipped in honey).

On top of that, his brother Arthur (Richard Kind, the only recognizable actor in the film) is crashing with them, spending his days nursing a nasty cyst in their bathroom and his nights using his math skills to win at gambling. Larry's daughter seems to care only about the state of her hair, and son Danny is about to have his bar mitzvah, in between pining for his transistor radio confiscated by the school principal, smoking dope and running from a bully whom he owes money for said dope.

And more: A Korean student who is failing Larry's class attempts to bribe him for a passing grade; his unbalanced neighbor is encroaching on his property line; the neighbor's wife is sunbathing nude; he can't get in to see the good elderly rabbi, only the unhelpful other two; and someone is sending anonymous letters to the tenure committee, urging his rejection.

The story of Job, for whose who don't know or remember, is about a man whom God punishes with all sorts of ill happenings and temptations to see if he will falter in his faith. With Larry, we're never really sure if it's his faith that's motivating him or just a generic desire to be a mensch, aka a good and serious man.

I generally enjoyed the movie, although Larry is such nudgenick, a man so utterly passive and unable to stand up for himself, that his act wears thin very soon. After an hour or so of nervous stuttering, sweaty lips and quavering questions, we're ready for Larry to grow a pair and take action -- for good or ill, but at least moving in some direction.

I get the sense that "A Serious Man" is a very personal film for Joel and Ethan Coen, and that they're using it to work out some of thoughts about their Jewish faith. That's well and good, but it also makes for a movie that never invites you in.

3 stars