A MURKY chapter in Cold War history gets the Masterpiece Theatre treatment from Steven Spielberg in Bridge of Spies, a tense and thoroughly absorbing period drama about an unknown but upright American lawyer who finds himself the key player in a secret prisoner exchange between two cagey nuclear powers.

Espionage, paranoia, political intrigue and some old-fashioned horse trading take centre stage in this slow-moving, dialogue-driven film, marking the start of Oscar season and with Tom Hanks - Old Reliable himself - doing the dealing. The Coen brothers reworked an original script by Matt Charman and the director does the rest, adopting an attention-to-the-details approach that transports audiences into the heart of the Spielberg universe.

Breaking down the big picture, assembling individual stories and liberating lives during times of human conflict are popular themes with Spielberg. He did it to dazzling effect in both Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). His latest effort is based on a true story that covers a fair bit of moral high ground, but Bridge of Spies doesn't have the emotional resonance of those earlier films.