Extraordinary true story becomes ordinary

Rating: 4/10 (26 August 2016)

Steven Spielberg is getting awfully stately. He's always been family-friendly, but there used to be an energy, a bit of sass about him. Now the challenge to authority is no more than Tom Hanks being a bit smarter than the Government men, and the whole thing is played at an unchanging ceremonial pace at least as reverential as Lincoln.
This is Cold War thriller become costume drama. Despite the genuinely tense storyline, and some normally bullet-proof anxiety scenes (crossing the wall! waiting on the bridge!), not once does the pulse get above what you'd get from watching the documentary.
It's an extraordinary true story with the extraordinary taken out. And the interesting: there's some potentially really thoughtful stuff about Hank's relationship with Rylance, and where patriotism might be when American interests clash with American values, and what he's inflicting on his family by his stubbornness - but none of it comes to anything. Hanks attracts danger (more in America than in Germany) and shame, but then his family gets to see him on TV so it's all OK.
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