Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg team for 'Bridge of Spies'

Now that Harper Lee has revealed Atticus Finch to be Archie Bunker, America needs a new lawyer to embody the courageous and humane application of the rule of law.

"Bridge of Spies" nominates James Donovan, a name drawn from history - in 1959, Donovan was plucked from a prosperous private firm practicing insurance law and assigned to represent accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance).

This was a legal task few wanted, which of course made it the legal case all the more necessary and important - on trial are both the spy and the ideals embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

"Bridge of Spies" is set at the peak of Cold War animosity and paranoia, and Donovan pays a professional and personal cost for his unpopular defense of this culpable and unapologetic Soviet agent.

We watch Donovan make a Finch-like stand against this tide of anger - someone throws a rock through the window of his home, hostile commuters stare at him on the train and even the managing partner (Alan Alda) who assigned him the case balks at the idea of an appeal.

Hanks gets over-accused of playing Righteous American Everyman - he throws in a "Cloud Atlas" now and then - but his bona fides help him melt easily into this role, and Spielberg surely counts on the residue that Hanks carries from "Saving Private Ryan" and "Apollo 13."

That's fine, that's what movie stars are for. As Donovan, he is the embodiment of probity and diligence. In fact, these attributes become his coat and his luggage when the CIA unofficially assigns him to go to East Berlin and negotiate a trade - his client for Francis Gary Powers, the American U2 pilot shot down while flying spy-plane missions over the Soviet Union.

Neither government wants the negotiations to be official, so Donovan deals with layers of pretense and ritual, handled by Spielberg as a kind of comedy of Eastern-bloc bureaucracy.

The Soviets bluster and bully, and American agents make callous realpolitik calculations - they freak out when Donovan independently starts to negotiate the simultaneous release of a jailed American student.

In a shadow world beyond established law (East Germany is barely a country at this point), Donovan navigates with nothing but his own moral compass - what is meant to be seen as his American sense of right and wrong.

You can take this as Spielbergian sentimentalism, but he's up to something - the movie functions as a subtle rebuke of shortcuts our country has taken on its latest global conflict, the war on terror.

Speeches about setting constitutional practice aside for the sake of expediency are meant to say as much about 2015 as 1959.

"Bridge of Spies" is slick, and it's well done. And yet, for all the movie's canny Hanks-Spielberg professionalism, you sometimes feel this Hollywood power couple lacking some of the old confidence.

When Donovan delivers an argument before the Supreme Court, you almost can't hear him for the inspirational Thomas Newman music blaring from the speakers. Another purple speech about "the standing man" is also over-cued.

Hanks and Spielberg didn't used to need so many trumpet fanfares.