Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies
AKA: Remember the Russians are evil.

So, do we need to attack Russia now? This movie takes a new perspective to an old cliché and some sort of spin. But is a cliché and is the perversion of a real and very nice story.

We take on the time of the cold war when everybody was paranoid and though that everybody was a spy. Well this is the story of some spies that actually got caught doing spy stuff, so far so good, the actual story goes that way, but later we see that the Russians are exaggerated cartoons of how evil the Government wants the people to believe they are, I think I even saw Ivan Drago around there during the tortures and interrogatories.

Well the story revolves around the lawyer that defended the communist spy, how they assign him and he decided to do his best on a Kangaroo trial, already decided to convict the suspect, and then how he has to negotiate for the release of American spies on western Germany. We see how the American people haven’t change at all calling him communist and attacking him for doing a job he didn’t choose and after that still asking him to do more.

Also apparently everything happened in Berlin that week, the wall was built without warning, people got shot, and the youth became some kind of scary gangs.

Is a Spielberg movie so is very watchable, you have your money’s worth with good camera, editing and storytelling, but again feels like propaganda to hate Russia and that is always a “no, no” in my book. If you want to make propaganda make it improve yourself not to make others look bad.

But then again what jumped more to my attention was all the liberties that they took with the actual story and change it for the script, because this is inspired (and I say inspired because if it would have been based it would had remained some actual facts).

So let’s see some actual facts that are not shown on the movie.

The pilot wasn’t tortured or interrogated all day and night, Russians knew that with torture one can say anything just to stop it, so they confined the guy for safe keeping as a token they could exchange later, during his confinement the pilot became friends with his guards and learned to knit and Russian. After he came back to the states he was confined and interrogated for days, because the government thought they Russians had turned into a double spy, what turned into the end of his military career and became helicopter pilot for a news channel, he wrote his story into the book called Bridge of spies, but the government said it was communist propaganda, he died in an helicopter accident in bizarre circumstances.

 

This is a carpet that Power (the American pilot) knit, the guy had a good hand.

On the other side of the Iron wall the communist spy was welcomed like a hero and was called the unbreakable spy, there even was a parade, and even he was not a great spy that never got any relevant information, he lived as a legend so much that in 1990 a post stamp was made in his honour.

 

In the movie they made it sound like the Russians are going to kill him, but here he is, "The Unbreakable Spy" in his commemorative stamp of 1990.

And also in Berlin first it was delimitated by posts and started to ask for papers to cross them, then they set barbwire, and the checkpoints became stricter, then came the watchtowers, after that came the wall, but people was already used to the checkpoints and all that stuff, also nobody tried to just jump the wall, I mean they were Germans, they plan everything, so yes basically the part of Berlin is also a cartoon of what it was or what the US people think it was.

I think that the Russian guy actually was tortured, because up to this day the US keeps torturing its prisoners, and men the guy didn’t broke so you need some strength for that.

The movie is good as I said not great and not Best movie material again it goes to the “meh” pile.

*** 3 out of 5 stars not great but it will make the time go.