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movie review - Bridge of Spies

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2017.08.04

This is a Cold War piece about a lawyer who is hired by the US military to negotiate the freedom of a spy who has been captured by the Soviets. Unknown to the military, the lawyer isn't just a fine negotiator, he's also unwilling to "leave a man behind" and when he discovers that an innocent US citizen has also been caught up in the fun of the Soviet's endless prison complex, he insists on freeing that person as well.

It's a tense tale of course (have I mentioned the Soviets) and I found it engaging from start to finish. It hits just the right tone, that there can be hope and that that hope can come from doing the right thing in the face of long odds and no reward from your 'friends'. I mean, I've spent most of my career in that headspace. The lead knocks it out of the park with his portrayal of a quietly confident person able to stare down his blustering countrymen and the stone-faced opposition.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.