LOS ANGELES -- "Everyone deserves a defense. Every person matters."
That may be a popular notion today, but at the outset of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were pointing nukes at each another, maybe not so much.
Therein lies the central conflict of Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg's next movie, which dropped its first trailer on Friday.
The dramatic thriller tells the story of James Donovan (Tom Hanks), a Brooklyn lawyer and skilled negotiator who defends Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a New York-based Soviet agent charged with sending coded messages back to Russia. When an American U-2 pilot is shot down over the Soviet Union and captured, the CIA recruits Donovan to negotiate an exchange.
Of course, none of this makes Donovan very popular back home, where the political climate is a heightened state of fear and paranoia.
Bridge of Spies comes out Oct. 16.