From Brooklyn to Berlin

Rating: 6/10 (9 April 2017)

***MILD SPOILERS***True story of the capture conviction and later exchange of Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel, Mark Rylance, who was caught in his Brooklyn hotel room by the FBI trying to relay,in a hollowed out US nickel,a secret documents to his Soviet controllers back in 1957. What seemed like an open and shut case of espionage Abel was given insurance lawyer James B. Donovan, Tom Hanks, to represent him to show the world as well as the hated Soviet Union that he was to get a fair trial before he's to be executed or at least sent away for life for his crimes. Donovan really takes his job as well as the US Constatution seriously and defends Abel to the best of his ability only to have his client convicted and given a 30 year sentence which to many Americans seems like a slap on the wrist: That's after the Rosenbergs were executed for the very same crimes that Abel was convicted of some five years earlier.
With Abel locked away in federal prison in Georgia and Donoven appealing his conviction US Air Force pilot Francis Gary Powers,Austin Stowell, is shot down with his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union on of all days May 1-May or Workers Day in the USSR-1960 giving Abel a lifeline for an early out by the US Government who's ready to exchange him for Powers. It was Powers who against orders didn't end up killing himself with a cyanide tipped needle before he was captured by the Russians alive that exposed him as a US spy not a weather man as the US Government claimed he was.
With Donovan still Abel's lawyer he's told by his government to negotiate Abel's release in exchange for Powers who's been given a three year sentence, a lot less the Abel was given by the US courts ,behind bars as well as seven years house arrest-In the Moscow Hilton- by the Soviet peoples court. It's with all this going on a love sick American collage student Fred Pryor played by Will Rogers?, not the one you think it is but someone else, is busted by the Communist East German police in trying to get his German girlfriend out of the city of divided Berlin before it's walled up by the East German police as well as military. With the US more then willing to let the totally innocent Pryor hang-by his you know what's- but only wanting to get Powers, who in fact was spying on the USSR, freed Donovan makes it a point to get both Pryor as well as Donovan freed or else he just won't cooperate with his string pullers in both the State Department and Pentagon.
***MILD SPOILERS SINCE HISTORY ALREADY SHOWED US WHAT HAPPENED***Donovan prevailed in the end getting both Powers as well as Pryor freed for the return of Rudolf Able in a nail biting exchange on the Berlin Gilenicke Bridge with out as much as a shot, in anger or celebration, being fired. Donvovan who was hated and called a dirty Commie by almost everyone who knew him is now a hero not only by getting Powers and Pryor back but later getting over 9,000 Cuban freedom fighters and their families back to freedom after being captured and arrested by Castro's troops in the disastrous "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Communist Cuba in 1961. As for Francis Gary Powers the main man in this movie he never was given the respect that he deserved in him not killing himself before the Commies or Russans captured him thus exposing the entire U-2 spy operations to the world at large. And putting the US, who up until then said it was national policy not to spy on anyone, the self proclaimed "Good Guys of the Free World" in a bad light.