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Bridge of Spies is a film about the 1960's spy exchange in which a Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel, was traded for an American pilot, Francis Gary Powers. The movie shows an important dynamic between two nations that had the highest tensions in modern history. The movie does a fantastic job of portraying the chaos and confusion of the political climate and gives the feeling of uncertainty which defined that era. This is the most important knowledge of the film is how it shows the importance of nationalism and dehumanization of the two nations. The film shows the irony in believing that our nations spies are heroes whereas spies from another country are evil. This help illustrate the feeling a dangerous political climate where every person is either an ally or an enemy.

A scene which exemplifies this feeling is when Donovan goes to meet Mr.Vogel and is instead met with a Soviet ambassador. During the negotiation where the ambassador tells him that they are all just 'little men' trying to do their jobs. This shows the audience that most people involved in the exchange know very little about the why the information is important or why it is necessary for each of them to do their jobs. This also shows the importance of intelligence which the film makes very clear its importance in the cold war but does not show why.

For a movie about spies in the cold war there is very little information on why information was so important in the cold war. There is a line when the commander for Gary Powers said the information would give them an edge in a full thermonuclear exchange. This is an important reason why information was so coveted in this time but intelligence gathered in the cold war concerned more than just direction in the event of a nuclear war but also the prevention of it.

The film does not show the importance of general information in the cold war. For the first time the United States had to attempt to contain not troops of a foreign enemy but an ideology. Information became used not just for understanding the next military move of the Soviets but the next political move. The United States need to try and discover the ties the Soviets may or may not have had each major political event, all while trying to hide their own.

If this movie were to gain 20 minutes of time I would first show the Abel vs. United States supreme court case which was one of the most fascinating supreme court cases of the time period. In a 5-4 ruling it was decided that the evidence gathered was not forfeit and abides by the fourth amendment. This was likely not included in the movie because of how they stated the evidence was gathered which in the film said that there was absolutely no warrant to search the building Abel was in therefor all the items were to be thrown out. This is not entirely true and was not nearly as self evident as the movie portrays. While the specific reasons why the case might have been allowed were too complex for me to understand.

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