For someone so universally loved, Steven Spielberg can be quite a divisive director. Sometimes his sentimentality and upstanding morals warm your heart, and sometimes they stick in your throat. Bridge of Spies does the latter far too often.

Spielberg crafts some delightful visual moments, but the editing is often clumsy in stitching together his ever-deliberate camera movements. Likewise, the script by the Coen brothers and Matt Charman occasionally bristles with deadpan humour, but mostly becomes entrenched in stultifying legal proceedings.

Hanks is the brightest spark, navigating international politics and individual personalities with charm and admirable resilience.

Class is permanent when you’ve got the likes of Spielberg, Hanks and the Coens on board, but Bridge of Spies is an example of missed potential that’s less than the sum of its parts.

RATING: 3/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, Jesse Plemons

DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg

WRITERS: Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

SYNOPSIS: During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.