Steven Spielberg has often been likened to Alfred Hitchcock — they’re among the handful of directors who have become household names, with themes and techniques and personality quirks that resonate across their respective filmographies — but “Bridge of Spies” may be the first time since “Jaws” that Spielberg could be accused of doing a Hitchcock. Not one of the Master of Suspense’s classic thrillers, but the top-heavy international late-career Hitch of “Topaz” and “Torn Curtain.” And there’s Tom Hanks pretending to be middle-aged Jimmy Stewart in the middle of it all. 
 
 Hanks is playing New York insurance lawyer James Donovan, a complacent “Mad Men”-era innocent who gets yanked into Cold War intrigue much the way Stewart or Cary Grant found themselves at the wrong end of a runaway crop-duster. The catch is that “Bridge of Spies” is based on a true story, and the real Donovan did find himself defending a Soviet agent in court and later airlifted to East Berlin as a secret negotiator in the U-2 spy plane incident of the early 1960s. 
 
 This sounds like a recipe for high-octane huggermugger and loaded MacGuffins, but the movie is surprisingly low on energy if long on smarts. It’s plush, professional, tonally wobbly, and very watchable. Spielberg and his collaborators (Hanks, longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, production designer Adam Stockhausen of “Grand Budapest Hotel” fame) wallow in the pleasures of craft. But compact and to the point it’s not, and you may be forgiven if your mind more than once wanders to the laundry. 
 
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 “Bridge of Spies” opens slyly and well, with a little gray man — a weekend landscape painter haunting the parks of 1957 Brooklyn — arrested by the FBI and revealed to be Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Welsh-accented spy for the USSR. Those of us who got addicted to the miniseries “Wolf Hall” will envy audiences coming to actor Mark Rylance for the first time and realizing that this human smudge with the flyaway eyebrows can make the doing of nothing seem perfectly, completely riveting. Rylance’s Abel, fastidious and bleak, is the mystery at the heart of an otherwise stouthearted movie, and your hopes rise whenever he’s onscreen. 
 
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 When he’s not, you’re content to hang with Hanks, who is fine company as the deceptively bland Donovan. Coerced by his law partner (a shifty Alan Alda) to represent Abel in court — to prove to the communists that the US justice system is fair — Donovan finds himself drawn to the enemy spy’s calm and professional pride, and he defends him in good faith even as his neighbors, his wife (Amy Ryan, criminally underused), strangers on the subway, and even the judge in the case (Dakin Matthews) would as soon hang the Soviet from the highest lamppost. The irony, unsubtle but irresistible, is that in a country obsessed with preserving the American Way, Donovan’s the only one living it. 
 
 Which gets his family shot at and, in one scene right out of Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent,” dodging a mysterious man wielding an umbrella during a heavy downpour. If Hitchcock’s movies were often about the perils of being “the wrong man,” “Bridge of Spies” celebrates Jim Donovan as the right man for a paranoid time, with native diplomatic skills and a stubborn moral code that renders him superior to the CIA spooks and enemy apparatchiks hoping to use him for their own agendas. 
 
 Halfway through, “Bridge of Spies” sends the hero to Berlin to negotiate a spy swap, Abel for Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), whose high-tech spy plane has gone down over Soviet territory in the film’s most rousing action sequence. (Something has to go in the trailer.) This allows Spielberg and Kaminski to go all-out with a re-creation of the building of the Berlin Wall, not to mention the perils involved in trying to cross from East to West Berlin before, during, and after. And it puts Donovan in contact with a wonderful rogues’ gallery of rival Russians and Germans, played by actors with great character mugs like Sebastian Koch, Mikhail Gorevoy, Burghart Klaussner, and Max Mauff. 
 
 You sense the hand(s) here of Joel and Ethan Coen, who share screenplay credit with Matt Charman and who reportedly took a whetstone to his original script. (It’s the most recent of the brothers’ works for hire, and more successful than last year’s “Unbroken.”) “Bridge of Spies” has a spiky, subversive wit that struggles to break free throughout and that often works at cross-purposes with more traditional themes of patriotism and American exceptionalism. The movie’s a muddle that has been handcrafted by experts, a spy thriller that insists on kindness, and an ensemble piece that knows enough to acknowledge a natural screen presence whenever Rylance is in view. 
 
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 Most bewildering of all, “Bridge of Spies” is a moral drama driven by an insurance lawyer. That it works at all is a miracle — or would be, if anyone other than St. Steven were involved. 
 
 Movie Review 
 
 ★★★ 
 
 BRIDGE OF SPIES 
 
 Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Matt Charman, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen. Starring Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Austin Stowell, Will Rogers. At Boston Common, Fenway, Kendall Square, West Newton, suburbs. 142 minutes. PG-13 (some strong language, injury images, brief nudity) 
 
 Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @tyburr ||||| Directed by Steven Spielberg, "Bridge of Spies" is based on the true story of the 1960 U-2 incident. Brooklyn lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is thrust into the center of the Cold War as he negotiates the release of a pilot, whose spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. ( / Lionsgate) 
 
 An air of wholesome, stolid assurance pervades “Bridge of Spies,” a handsome, sober-minded Cold War thriller about a little-known chapter of American history. And why not? This absorbing tale of tradecraft, political ideals and unimpeachable moral character has been brought to the screen by no less a craftsman than Steven Spielberg, here directing from a script written by Joel and Ethan Coen, with Matt Charman. 
 
 In case that pedigree isn’t convincing enough, Tom Hanks stars as the film’s inspiring lead character, a quietly heroic New York lawyer who in another era would have been portrayed by James Stewart or Gary Cooper. 
 
 Hanks is his generation’s answer to those paragons of rectitude, and in “Bridge of Spies” he reminds us why. As James Donovan, who in 1957 defended — unsuccessfully — accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel at the behest of the U.S. government, Hanks exudes modesty, high principles and simple fairness. When the plot thickens and he becomes involved in a swap of prisoners to take place in East Germany — Abel for U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 — he shifts his trademark humility into overdrive, insisting to his Communist intermediaries that he has a cold and just wants “to go home and get into bed.” One of the many subtexts of the film’s low-key brinkmanship is how the Cold War kept from getting hot; Hanks has always been disarming, but in this case he’s literally as well as figuratively so. 
 
 Hanks’s aw-shucks charm could easily curdle into smugness here, but Spielberg keeps the self-righteousness to a minimum. When he allows Donovan to speechify, it’s on behalf of constitutional due process and American fair play. These are clearly meant to resonate in the era of Guantanamo and mass surveillance — much as the fractiousness and executive strong-arming in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” chimed with realpolitik in 21st-century Washington. Mostly, though, the director simply follows the action, first as Donovan meets his client, Abel, a taciturn sleeper agent, and then as both men’s fates intertwine with the U-2 episode, an obscure American graduate student living in West Berlin and the emergent geopolitical identity of a brand-new East Germany. 
 
 Filmed by longtime Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, “Bridge of Spies” looks as if it’s been carved from granite and mist. Blues, grays and chilly puffs of white light are to Spielberg what syrupy ambers are to Woody Allen. Spielberg — himself a child of the duck-and-cover 1950s — adroitly establishes the heaviness and barely contained paranoia of the time, which he depicts with rich, unnostalgic atmosphere. He’s also done a good job of casting actors blessed with timeless features, especially Amy Ryan, who plays Donovan’s wife with understated elegance and a few particularly well-timed sidelong glances. 
 
 
 
 With his aw-shucks charm kept under control by director Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks plays a lawyer who in another era would have been portrayed by James Stewart or Gary Cooper. (Jaap Buitendijk/DreamWorks /Twentieth Century Fox Film) 
 
 It should come as no surprise that Spielberg moves viewers through Donovan’s story with good taste and practiced confidence. With the help of some clever cuts and dissolves from editor Michael Kahn, he imparts an enormous amount of information in a series of swift, graceful scenes that firmly establish the protagonist’s hard-nosed negotiating skills as well as his reflexive belief that America’s democratic values are its best weapon. The narrative of “Bridge of Spies” flags only when Donovan arrives in East Germany, where he embarks on a series of talky, often bizarre encounters with KGB apparatchiks and shadowy satellite figures, the most amusing of which involves members of Abel’s fake “family,” who implore the American attorney to free their husband and father. (As he often does, Spielberg also can’t seem to decide on an ending for “Bridge of Spies,” so he supplies three.) 
 
 Part of the reason why the Germany sequences sag is that they don’t feature Abel, who is played by British actor Mark Rylance in what, with luck, will be a career-making performance. Many viewers may not have heard of Rylance, who recently played Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall” on PBS. But his work in “Bridge of Spies” deserves to be widely recognized as an example of screen acting at its most subtle, poignant and exquisitely calibrated. 
 
 In the film’s near-wordless opening section, during which Abel goes about his daily business as an unassuming painter, Rylance communicates volumes about his character’s discipline and isolation, simply by way of facial expression and body language. Later, as Abel and Donovan develop an alliance of mutual understanding and respect, he relaxes just enough to indulge a streak of deadpan, unmistakably Slavic humor. 
 
 Rylance turns in a sensitive, deeply etched portrayal of a studiously nondescript criminal. Yet “Bridge of Spies” expands from being a smart, engrossing procedural to a carefully observed character study of Donovan, a particularly intriguing, heretofore overlooked American figure. Thanks to his own reflexive values, Spielberg can’t help but make the kind of inspiring, classically constructed drama that we keep being told Hollywood doesn’t produce anymore. 
 
 Thank goodness he still does. ||||| In this image released by Disney, Tom Hanks appears in a scene from "Bridge of Spies." (Jaap Buitendijk/DreamWorks Pictures/Fox 2000 PIctures via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies," much like its misunderstood litigator, is a film that plays the long game. This complex Cold War drama soaked in shadows, blues, greys and furrowed brows, is a slow burn that challenges the audience to trust where it's going. 
 
 In this fictional rendering of how a Brooklyn insurance lawyer ended up negotiating a high-stakes prisoner exchange at the height of the Cold War, Spielberg and writers Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen toss details at you, shake them all around and piece them back together in the third act, when the form of the puzzle starts to take shape. Only then can you begin to fully appreciate just how lean and purposeful every moment is. 
 
 Suddenly that seemingly random conversation about clients and incidents from the first act isn't an outlier after all — it means everything. As a first time viewing experience, it's like not realizing you've been playing a game of chess until you've already lost. 
 
 That's all to say that "Bridge of Spies," which waxes poetic — and occasionally cynically — on patriotism, honor, and duty, echoes in your mind long after the credits roll and begs for a second viewing. 
 
 On the page, "Bridge of Spies" is the story of everyman James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), a lawyer and family man who takes on the thankless task of representing Soviet Agent Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in a trial, only to then be called on to negotiate his exchange for a detained U.S. soldier on behalf of the CIA. But that's just scratching the surface of this very thoughtful meditation on doing the right thing — embodied in the burgeoning friendship between Abel and Donovan. 
 
 Donovan fights for Abel despite the scorn of the public, the indifference of the legal system and the danger to his family. When he goes to Berlin to negotiate the exchange of Abel for a detained U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), Donovan decides, against the wishes of the U.S., to try to tack on the release of another imprisoned American as well. 
 
 This all makes Donovan sound like a martyr. The film fights against that cozy idea, though. Donovan is not sentimentalized or propped up in an unbelievable way. In Hanks' hands, Donovan is a real person, runny nose, doubts and all. Reality, tedium and wit supersede the hyperbole of the great man myth. In this way, it makes "Bridge of Spies" feel like a spiritual companion to "Lincoln." 
 
 Perhaps most unexpected, though, is how Rylance sneaks up on you and proves himself to be the heart, soul, and standout of the film. 
 
 The Shakespearean actor is actually the first person we meet, in an elegant, nearly dialogue-free opening showing the FBI's real time pursuit and arrest of Abel. Cold War-era fears want to paint him as the face of the enemy, but Rylance makes Abel sympathetic, and even docile. He plays him as a highly intelligent foot soldier who's seen enough to know that even possible execution isn't enough to get worked up over. It's impossible not to like him. 
 
 But the story's focus on Abel is juxtaposed with near indifference to Francis Gary Powers and the detained American student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers). Donovan wants to get them both out, and is confident enough in his negotiating skills to defy the CIA in the process, but the film doesn't seem to care if you care about them — at least not in the way it does for Abel. 
 
 It's in these unexpected details and choices that Spielberg continues to defy our skeptical movie expectations. He has a point of view, he has a plan, and he remains in a class of his own in his ability to both execute those ambitions and entertain in the process. 
 
 "Bridge of Spies," a Walt Disney Studios release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "some violence and brief strong language." Running time: 142 minutes. Three stars out of four. 
 
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 MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. 
 
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 Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr ||||| This year, the Independence Day weekend box office didn't prove as fruitful as expected for all the new movie releases: while Finding Dory continued its ascension with the biggest domestic third weekend of all time for an animated movie, The Legend of Tarzan and The BFG brought in meager results. Steven Spielberg's The BFG, the second movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's popular children's novel after an animated TV film in 1989, earned $24 million on a $140 million budget, which means it's now fully relying on its overseas performance. 
 
 While The BFG wasn't exactly expected to be a massive summer success, such a flop is surprising considering the movie had all the ingredients to convince audiences. Does that mean Roald Dahl's stories are too obscure for the new generation of moviegoers, or that Spielberg's visual storytelling is not what it once was? Not necessarily: Looking at why it could possibly have failed so terribly, it seems the case of The BFG shouldn't put too much weight on the perception of Spielberg's or Dahl's potential. 
 
 What Is The BFG Actually About? 
 
 Original illustration for 'The BFG' by Quentin Blake 
 
 For those who haven't had the pleasure of devouring Roald Dahl's tales when they were children, The BFG is a simple story of an orphan named Sophie, who spots a giant bringing dreams to the humans by blowing a magical concoction through bedroom windows. When he realizes he's been seen, he takes Sophie with him to Giant Country, where she discovers that he lives with a bunch of not-so-friendly giants who eat children for dinner. Because that's not a pleasant thought for a little girl, she devises a plan to capture them — with the help of the Queen of England. 
 
 
 
 The BFG Earned Some Good Critics 
 
 Critics were far from unanimous on the potential of The BFG, but on Rotten Tomatoes, it still earned a respectable critic score of 71% and an audience score of 66% — not really the kind of movie you'd expect to make less than a fifth of its budget on its opening weekend. 
 
 The most praised part of the film was Mark Rylance, the British stage actor who just won an Oscar for his role in Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, as the Big Friendly Giant himself. The challenge of bringing nuance to a performance mostly relying on motion capture might seem overwhelming, but even with his distorted features, Rylance does the Giant great justice. 
 
 'The BFG' / Walt Disney Pictures 
 
 The special effects are also grandiose, from the soft sparkle of the dream material to the wonder-inspiring Giant Country. You'd think that a great story on paper combined to the required technical achievement would translate to the ideal visuals, but that might just be the issue with The BFG: It doesn't go much further than a pretty picture. 
 
 Was There Any Space In The Summer Schedule For The BFG? 
 
 'Finding Dory' / 'The Legend of Tarzan' / 'The BFG' 
 
 Even without diving into a debate on the quality of the movie itself, it's safe to say that The BFG wasn't optimally prepared to take on the summer box office. Squished between the trailblazing Dory and The Legend of Tarzan, teenagers and families had plenty of options to enjoy Independence Day weekend. Add to that the mysterious title of The BFG, and it looks like a more explicit name could have served the movie better, especially for American audiences who aren't as familiar with Dahl's work as people are in England. 
 
 More importantly, The BFG appears like it has positioned itself at a confusing halfway point between a children's movie and an adults' one — not that a film has to be one or the other, as Pixar has proven time and again, but because it never seems to fully satisfy either generation. 
 
 The BFG Misses The Depth Of The Original Book 
 
 'The BFG' / Walt Disney Pictures 
 
 It doesn't give kids and teenagers the appeal of a big household name or a recognizable face and story, while it just seems too plain for grown-up moviegoers who might have been attracted by Spielberg or Rylance. As it revels in the beauty of Giant Country and takes plenty of time to deploy its stunning special effects, The BFG seems to forget the darker, grittier side of every Roald Dahl story that would have given the movie that extra depth. The child-eating giants bear names such as Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater, and still the movie doesn't ever get truly scary. Same goes for the loneliness of the Giant, which gives the movie a melancholic tone here and there but never really hits you. 
 
 Still, The BFG's Box Office Flop Isn't Necessarily Part Of A Trend 
 
 'The BFG' / Walt Disney Pictures 
 
 Considering we're all so used to Spielberg churning out the masterpieces, it's easy to start wondering if the director has "lost his touch," or if this is "the end of an era." Or we could turn to the genre of children's books adaptations, and start panicking that they've lost the appeal they've once had. 
 
 In the case of The BFG, however, the main issue of the movie is more about being unremarkable than disastrous. The adaptation didn't twist the original material beyond recognition, and this giant looks as big and friendly as he should. Spielberg is getting a similar recipe ready with Ready Player One — it's a book adaptation, and it stars Mark Rylance — and we still have plenty of reasons to be excited about it. So keep the book adaptations coming! 
 
 Have you seen The BFG? Do you think it could have been more successful?
– Tom Hanks took some time off from being awesome to star as an American attorney who must negotiate a prisoner swap in Soviet Russia in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies. Critics and audiences are equally in love, giving the flick a 92% and 90% approval rating, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. Some highlights: "Spielberg can't help but make the kind of inspiring, classically constructed drama that we keep being told Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. Thank goodness he still does," writes Ann Hornaday writes at the Washington Post. British actor Mark Rylance gives "what, with luck, will be a career-making performance" as accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, she adds. He's "an example of screen acting at its most subtle, poignant and exquisitely calibrated." "Bridge of Spies isn't conventionally exciting, and isn't intended to be. Instead, it's satisfying—thoroughly and pleasurably so," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. It’s "a fascinating piece of fiction based on fact, a Cold War parable of moral principles colliding with the imperatives of national security," he adds. Hanks portrays James Donovan "with stirring conviction leavened by enjoyable zest," Morgenstern writes, while "Rylance's performance is a minimalist wonder." Essentially, the movie "is a moral drama driven by an insurance lawyer. That it works at all is a miracle—or would be, if anyone other than St. Steven were involved," writes Ty Burr at the Boston Globe. "Compact and to the point it's not," but it is "plush, professional, tonally wobbly, and very watchable," he says. He agrees Rylance can "make the doing of nothing seem perfectly, completely riveting," but adds Hanks is "fine company." Lindsey Bahr describes the film as "a slow burn." The filmmakers "toss details at you, shake them all around and piece them back together in the third act ... Only then can you begin to fully appreciate just how lean and purposeful every moment is," she writes at AP. "Spielberg continues to defy our skeptical movie expectations," she adds. This film "echoes in your mind long after the credits roll and begs for a second viewing."