Bridge Of Spies Film Analysis

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Bridge of Spies Synopsis Directed by Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies is based on true events during the Cold War. After a silent phone call, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) walks into the streets of 1957 Brooklyn and boards a subway. The film’s first words come over the subway’s PA system: “Broad Street will be next.” Abel gets off and is followed. He sits on a bench to paint. Through a slight-of-hand in adjusting his easel, Abel pockets a false coin attached to the bottom of the bench and returns to his room. When Abel opens the coin, he unfolds a square piece of paper and reads it before FBI agents knock down his door. The agents search Abel’s room and arrest him, but Abel destroys the message from inside the coin. In the next scene, insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) When Donovan talks to Abel next, Abel says that Donovan reminds him of his father’s friend Stoikey Muzhik, or the “standing man,” who kept standing back up when he was beaten until his aggressors let him live. Donovan goes to the judge to convince him not to sentence Abel to death in case Abel could be used in a trade for a captured American. The next day, the judge sentences Abel to 30 years in prison, angering the trial’s audience. The night, Donovan’s house is shot at in a drive by. At the hangar, the pilots are instructed to kill themselves in event of capture. As Powers readies the U-2 for takeoff, the movie cuts between him and Donovan, who is giving a speech to the Supreme Court. A missile hits Powers’s plane, and he is thrown out before hitting the destruct button. He parachutes into Russian territory and is put in prison. Donovan meets with the CIA to discuss going to East Germany to facilitate a prisoner exchange to get Powers back. In Berlin, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), an American economics student, tries to get a professor’s daughter out of East Germany, but is unsuccessful. Pryor is arrested by the

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