TOM HANKS’ SPY TRAIN

What are you lookin’ at? via nypost.com

The Bridge Of Spies Waits For Tom Hanks.

Who doesn’t like a nice train ride.

It’s a different view than the highway and you don’t have to drive.

From a highway we even stop and watch trains as they pull a long line of cars.

Trains unified America with that Golden Spike. You could travel someplace without looking at some animals butt pulling your wagon.

A train is a sign of progress.

In Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks takes a few train rides that show the past and the future. No small trick, even in a Steven Spielberg movie.

Ride One.

Early on we see a vintage old media moment dripping in nostalgia. There’s Tom Hanks on a Brooklyn train to work.

Everyone reads their newspaper on this train the way people stare at their phones today. Tom Hanks shows up on the front page.

One by one the people on the train notice Tom sitting among them. And they’re not happy.

How can anyone hate Tom Hanks?

Ride Two.

It’s East Berlin fifteen years after the end of WWII. Outside the train window everything still looks blown to shit.

Piles of rubble lay around from the work of Russian artillery in 1945.

The reason why? “They want us to continue living in the wreckage,” said one character.

The beauty of a Steven Spielberg movie is how he shows time move. His idea of a motion picture carries the audience with it. He makes moving pictures like no one else.

A Spielberg/Tom Hanks movie doesn’t need the heavy orchestra music playing in the background to set the mood, but it’s there. Maybe too much?

These guys have a handle on movie history. Even if Tom Hanks didn’t play Lincoln, he could have.

Ride Three.

This train ride shows Tom coming home from his European adventure.

A reflection of 1960 America plays in the train window with Tom’s face fading on the glass. He doesn’t pass by a baseball game, his mom, or apple pie, but it feels that way.

The future is quicksand, changing with each step, each train stop, where you don’t know if friends are still friends but you still have to trust.

The past is fading faster than a setting sun but you still have to see the details to learn what comes next.

As a movie device to engage delicate emotions it’s as subtle as the first train ride and all the newspapers.

Ride Four.

This last train trip shows Tom Hanks taking the 8:15 into the city, tucked into his seat the way he’s been all his adult life.

His picture is in the paper again. Instead of a stink-eyed scowl from the crowd, one woman notices him and matches the paper up.

A middle aged Brooklyn woman cracks the code for us. She shares the moment with Tom Hanks and the rest of us.

If you expected the passengers to all break into song and celebrate Tom, you’re watching the wrong movie.

Will the train go off the tracks? Not in Bridge Of Spies.

Will Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and the Coen brothers deliver a classic?

That’s why you’ll see the movie. Then come back and report.