A very pro-American film

Rating: 5/10 (16 February 2016)

The Donovan character (Tom Hanks) was portrayed as being perfect. A good husband, a good father, a good lawyer, a good humanitarian. While he did lose the first spy case, in the end, he saved his client's life and even got him out of prison. Is there nothing he couldn't do? Pro-American means also anti-communist.
East Berlin. My parents were born in Berlin and my father took me there about 4-5 years after the film takes place. Both my parents lived in what was in the 1960s the Eastern (Russian) zone.
It was no problem to cross the border into East Berlin. I did not see as much war destruction as was shown in the film. In fact, other then some bullet and shell damage to buildings, I can only remember one that showed real damage, and it was only the top two floors of a building. The scene with the gang that steals Hanks coat is pure fiction. East Berlin had both local policemen and Russian soldiers armed with machine guns. There may well have been young men without jobs, but they would not have been permitted to hang around in a group and harass people walking by.
I never saw people being shot down for trying to escape from the east, but I doubt very much the soldiers were even armed with machine guns, much less used them.
The film makes East Berlin look like a hell compared to the US. That is a pretty big exaggeration. The people in East Berlin did not have access to the rich stores and latest goods in West Berlin, but that is not my idea of hell.
It's a simplistic way of looking at the world: we are good/perfect/rich and they are jealous of us.
I did not particularly enjoy the film even within its own context.