Should I really be that upset that geeks have a reason to unite (putting the whole boycott star wars vii fiasco aside)? Or should I just be happy about the fact that there will be a rise in Star Wars sex toy sales over the next few months? The mere thought of it is both gross and hilarious to me but hey, I have to be entertained somehow.
I say this because Steven Spielberg has certainly lost the capacity to entertain or even keep me awake during his films. And if you were being completely honest with yourself, you’d say the same as you would eventually come to the realization that he hasn’t made a good movie since Minority Report; and that was over 13 years ago! Sure the prequel to Borat (The Terminal) was awesome but that’s only because of its unintentional comedy. My buddy and I offended dozens of Eastern Europeans with our imitations of Tom Hanks in that movie and I more than certain that they think we have sex with goats. You have to see the movie.
But moving on, this is exactly the reason why it took a ton of convincing for me to even see his latest effort, Bridge of Spies. It just looked like another version of the boring Lincoln. If you never got around to seeing that movie, you should be thankful that you didn’t subject yourself or any of your family members to 2 ½ hours of tedious monologues. Honestly, I would’ve been better off just reading the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass instead; at least I can get restroom brakes with that.
Well sadly there aren’t any restroom brakes during Bridge of Spies but thankfully there aren’t a ton of monologues either. This doesn’t mean however that Spielberg has finally found his way again. This movie is still full of shots with his annoying hazy background as well as his lame attempt at telling old people jokes; and sadly I mean jokes whose target audience is old people, not jokes about old people.
I will give him credit for thumbing his nose at how overly Americana most people were in the late 50’s and for slightly making fun of how the whole Cold War was viewed back then, but he, in usual fashion, tends to go a bit overboard.
This film is about insurance lawyer James Donovan and his taking on the thankless job of defending accused Russian spy Rudolph Abel. He takes the job more seriously than anyone really hoped he would and in the process saves him from the death penalty. And as it turned out, it actually wound up being a good move for America as a US spy’s plane is shot down over Russian soil and he is now being held in their custody. So the government decides that it would be a good idea to send Donovan over to Berlin to negotiate a swap for the two but the Russians only agree to this if the negotiations take place in Berlin, during the building of the Berlin Wall that is. As you can imagine, there is a ton of political tension he has to deal with along with the fact that he may be shot or detained himself. This is obviously the best part of the film.
Thankfully the Coen brothers helped write this screenplay, so they do include one or two of their quirks in it. But sadly, if you’re under the age of 40, you will find yourself repeatedly checking your watch to see how much time is left in the movie. This is old school film making at its best, so it has that going for it. But in the end, Spielberg forgot one key element when he was making this film, to make it entertaining. I rate this movie as WEAK!
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