Page Revisions:

(June 14, 2015) Original
(September 20, 2015) New Trailer (#2) / New Posters (#2-#5) / Page Redesigned

Release Date:

October 16, 2015

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “An American lawyer is recruited by the CIA during the Cold War to help rescue a pilot detained in the Soviet Union.”

Poster Rating: C+ / B / B+ / C- / C

Review: (#1) A very patriotic design that highlights a bankable star, but never steps beyond the rudimentary concepts.

(#2) This film seems determined to make a go of the floating-head motif. Each of their posters uses the same concept and each is with differing success. This is probably one of the better ones because it has a dynamic foreground image. (#3) However, this is the best of them with the interesting stylized version of a bridge. It works better than any of the ones using actual bridge images.

(#4) This is the worst simply because the foreground image feels so patently generic in spite of itself. (#5) This design diminishes the bridge aspect of the prior design, but not enough to create something truly memorable.

Trailer Rating: B+ / B

Review: (#1) A thrilling, jaw-dropping set up for a film that could be quite exciting in spite of its potential inadequacies. A director like Steven Spielberg can easily handle this kind of material and the trailer suggests he’s working at a high level of craftsmanship.

(#2) The soaring, bombastic score is entirely ill-fitting in this trailer design, trying to elicit emotions without doing the heavy lifting to get the audience there. It’s got much of the same material from the prior trailer, but overplays the “stand your ground” theme.

Oscar Prospects:

Steven Spielberg plus Cold War era espionage gives this a better than average shot at several top-tier nominations.

Trailer #1

Trailer #2

Posters

Poster #1Poster #2Poster #3

Poster #4Poster #5