BRIDGE OF SPIES

In many ways it's a great film, with many fascinating details, and one outstanding performance by Mark Rylance who played the secret Russian spy hiding away in greater New York. But then, it's a latter-day Spielberg directorial effort, and suffers from the same unnecessarily schmaltzy, syrupy, near-Disneyesque 50's-ness that really made WAR HORSE so exasperating to watch. Plus, there's a distance, a hesitation to engage, on Spielberg's part, that's palpable. Maybe it has to do with the Cohen brothers scripting the film. I can imagine those filmmaking greats being deferential to Spielberg, and Spielberg being deferential to the Cohens, and the result is a "oh, by all means, you first" through the doorway of this project, to everyone's, especially the audience's, ultimate detriment. Dare I say it feels like he phoned it in. SCORE: 54.