Best Negotiation Movie This Decade
Let the debate begin . . .
A quick word first
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Award season
I’m a film buff, with a penchant for movies about negotiation. Over the past decade, as a committee of one, I’ve regularly selected the best negotiation movie most years. Now it’s time to pick the Best of the Best from 2011 through 2020. My goal is letting you know about films you may have missed, or that deserve a second look through this lens.
I’d also like to hear from you about other worthy candidates, especially ones that illuminate the behavioral, interpersonal nature of the process, often more effectively than any book can. There are several strong contenders for the all-decade prize, so I’m using the Olympic medal system.
Bronze Medal
True Grit, the 2010 remake with Beau Bridges, earns its place on the medal stand with an early scene where a 14-year old girl (played by Haile Steinfeld) grinds down a horse-trader. She demolishes all his arguments and ups her demands along the way. Check out this clip to see how she, seemingly in a weak position, dominates the process from start to finish. (Return to your email after viewing the video.)
Silver medal
A Hijacking (2012) is a Danish film, almost entirely in English. Few people have ever heard of it, but it’s a master class for taking the long view when crafting negotiation strategy. Here’s the situation:
A small Danish freighter and its crew have been captured by Somali pirates. At gunpoint, its cook is forced to radio his shipping company’s headquarters in Copenhagen. “I’m calling,” he says, “to tell you they want $15,000,000.”
Listening on speaker in a conference room, the company president answers, “$250,000.” His colleagues at the table are shocked by the low-ball offer.
Another voice is heard over the speaker (maybe the cook, maybe the spokesman or one of the hijackers?) He says, “Are you crazy? They are going to start killing soon.” A shot can be heard. The movie then races forward.
When lives are at stake, why would anyone respond to a multi-million dollar demand with such a paltry offer? This clip explains the reasoning. Are you convinced? (Return to this email after viewing the video.)
Gold medal
Bridge of Spies (2015) is the most instructive and entertaining negotiation film of the past decade. It’s about the swap of a captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel (one of several false names), for former U.S. Air Force pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 surveillance plane was shot down over Russia in 1960.
It proved to be much more than a simple two-party trade. Instead, it was complex tangle of multiple negotiations. At its center was James Donovan,1 a New York insurance lawyer (played by Tom Hanks). Ultimately, Donovan had to negotiate with three governments: The Russians in Moscow, the East Germans in Berlin, and his own in Washington, D.C.
The upside of having a third party negotiate on your behalf. Donovan was a private citizen, but he was not an amateur. In World War II, he had worked with the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the CIA). Several years later, he was an Associate Prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.
Still, why use a civilian instead of a prominent State Department diplomat?
Simple answer: deniability. East-West tensions were extremely high at that time. The Berlin Wall had been erected only six months earlier. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had taken place just a few months before that. John F. Kennedy, early in his presidency, couldn’t afford another public failure.
The downside of hiring an independent negotiator. Donovan, in fact, had been Abel’s defense lawyer when the latter was prosecuted for spying. The two men developed an odd friendship, perhaps because of their common espionage experience. Donovan wasn’t able to thwart Abel’s conviction, but he prevented his client’s execution by arguing that Abel could be a useful bargaining chip in the event that one day the Soviets would arrest an American. That day came when Powers’ aircraft was brought down two years later.
The Abel-Powers negotiation itself took months. During that period East German security had arrested Frederic Pryor, a young Yale student, for alleged spying. Donovan was intent on also securing Pryor’s release, not just Powers,alone but that was not a White House priority. Kennedy himself confided in a friend, “I wouldn’t have busted my ass to get him out of jail all by himself.”
The importance of letting opposing parties save face. The sticking point was that Pryor was being held by the East Germans, not the Soviets. They insisted that his case had nothing to do with the Abel-for-Powers trade. To include their prisoner in the package—while getting nothing more in return—would confirm that their government was merely Russia’s puppet.
Donovan found himself pushed on all sides, including from the American government which was intent of getting Powers out of Russian hands. But he did not budge.
It finally took artful choreography to execute the deal. It was agreed that the Abel-Powers exchange would take place publicly the morning of February 10, 1962, on the Glienicke Bridge, connecting East and West Germany. At the same time Pryor would be privately released at Checkpoint Charlie, a crossing point near the Berlin Wall.
The American and Soviet sides met on the bridge at 8:20 that morning. But the Americans would not release Abel until they got confirmation that Pryor was at the checkpoint. Twenty-five tense minutes passed. Then word came that the young student was crossing over. Abel and Powers then changed places on the bridge.
Ultimately this was a great success. We will never know, though, how close Donovan came in pushing for Pryor’s release to overplaying his hand. And so it is any negotiation that we push to the limit.
Epilogue
Donavan wasn’t done negotiating on behalf of the U.S. government. This part of his career isn’t in the movie, but at the end of 1962, Donovan and Cuba’s Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, signed an agreement to exchange all the 1,113 Bay of Pigs prisoners for $53 million in food and medicine.
Again, it was an arms-length deal, ostensibly without the U.S. paying any ransom. (The payoff was supposedly sourced from private donations and from companies expecting tax concessions.) Talks between the sides continued after that. By the end of the negotiations, July 3, 1963, Donovan had secured the release of 9,703 men, women and children from Cuban detention, for which he received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.
Housekeeping
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I strongly recommend Donovan’s book, Strangers on a Bridge, on which the film is based.