Interesting but clumsy and a tad idealistic

Rating: 6/10 (3 March 2016)

Interesting but clumsy and a tad idealistic.
A European man living in the US, Rudolph Abel, is arrested as a Russian spy. An American lawyer, James Donovan, takes on his case but, faced with overwhelming evidence and a biased judge, loses the case. Abel is sentenced to 30 years in jail and Donovan's Supreme Court appeal fails. Just then Francis Gary Powers, the "U-2 Spy", is shot down over Russia and captured. Now Donovan becomes the negotiator in a potential prisoner swap...
Interesting story, especially as it is largely true and involves a very well-known historic event - the U-2 Spy. The negotiations and brinkmanship towards the end are quite intriguing.
However, feels clumsy, idealistic and, at times, contrived. The first part of the movie deals very heavy-handedly with Abel's trial. The character of Donovan also seems too goody-two-shoesy to be the real Donovan.
Certainly not Steven Spielberg's best direction - far from it. The movie seems to lack engagement and what there is is overly contrived and sentimental. Plus I quite quickly got irritated with his over- use of the last image of one scene being a segue to a new, unrelated, scene. Just felt very cheesy and amateurish.
Being a Steven Spielberg film, we have Tom Hanks in the lead role. He puts in a fairly solid performance. Mark Rylance got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as Abel. Not sure why - he doesn't have that much dialogue and his screen time is fairly limited too.