Also, it's Tom Hanks, and Hanks isn't stretching himself beyond being Hanks in this one. Of course, as with Spielberg, that comes with a particular level of quality, which means he's excellent as James Donovan. Or he's excellent at being Hanks as Donovan. Let's just say he didn't push himself into some other mold as he did in Saving Mr. Banks and Cast Away.
Mark Rylance, though, is great. Maybe it's that I'm not really familiar with him as an actor, but he is great in his role as Rudolf Abel.
Of course, the main issue with judging the acting is that there is nothing to compare these roles to. I mean, there is no model of behavior to compare Hanks' portrayal of Donovan against, not like there was with his portrayal of Walt Disney or Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln. In that, we have to take the characters as they appear on screen, which, maybe, is why Hanks is ultimately just Hanks. He's not trying to be a particular James Donovan, just a Hanks James Donovan.
All of which is to say that this is a finely acted movie with high production values, exactly what you'd expect. And the history seems to be pretty spot on, which is something I find important.
And I really enjoyed it. It's a good spy movie, much in the vein of the two George Smiley BBC series with Alec Guiness, especially the section where the CIA sends Donovan into East Germany, a man with no "spy training" -- he's just a lawyer -- and tells him to just feel the situation out and figure out what to do.
I don't know that it's actually an Oscar-level movie, neither the movie itself nor Hanks, but it's good. Really good. If you don't know anything about the time period, it's definitely worth seeing.
I do want to see it. Had too many other movies to catch this past weekend though. Not much in November, so maybe I'll see it then.
ReplyDeleteAlex: It's getting Oscar talk, so we went. As many of them as we cab get in before December is good.
DeleteIt looks good but it probably isn't an Oscar level movie. It's just the type of serious historic drama that can be considered Oscar appropriate. I still might see it though.
ReplyDeleteJeanne: Depending on what ends up being nominated, it could be a contender. And it is quite good.
DeleteI haven't even HEARD of this movie. How can there be a Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks that I haven't heard a word about?
ReplyDeleteSheesh I've been out of touch.
Maybe Tom Hanks is hitting that part of his career where he's just going to play "Tom Hanks." I read an article a long time ago that talked about how Hollywood packages actors as a certain mold: Tom Hanks is like the cool dad actor, someone who's mature but still fun, and then they just keep selling that. That's why actors get so pigeonholed and have trouble doing something else, but it helps sell them. When you see Spielberg on a movie, or Hanks, as you said, you know what to expect.
Actually that relates to books: I heard a podcast recently that talked about why a certain author (I forget who) whose first book was a kind of hit and loved by critics then just faded away and it was in part because she wrote so many different kinds of books. Her readers drifted away, because people who'd like the first book then found the second one too different. "If you want fame and riches," the speaker said "Write the same kind of books over and over."
It made me think of Jonathan Lethem, who (of the books I've read) wrote a scifi novel about a girl on a weird planet where she learns to sort of astrally project into aliens, and then wrote a book about a barely-successful girl who steals some of her boyfriend's funny sayings to make hit songs and then has her band fall apart just before they make it big. Both were great, but I can see where that would be hard for lots of people to follow.
(By the way, you might like him. The scifi book is "Girl In Landscape," and it's sort of the dreamy quiet scifi like "The Book Of Strange New Things," and the other one was "You Don't Love Me Yet." The latter was the better of the two.
Briane: Hanks is one of the few that broke out of his original mold, which was the goofy, funny guy who had awkward things happen to him. Or something like that. If you look back at his early career, it's all goofy comedy stuff, but he managed to maneuver that by doing some comedy with emotional content, which allowed him to take more serious roles. He's a really great actor, Forest Gump notwithstanding.
DeleteI'll check those books out.
The reviews have been excellent. Might check it out.
ReplyDeleteTAS: It's a good movie but it's not one that needs to be seen in the theater. It won't lose anything by seeing it on a TV for the first time.
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