Good Entertainment if You Don't Need Historical Accuracy or Reality

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2017)

We enjoyed this movie on a purely entertainment level. If you don't have to have historical accuracy and logic, this will do for that.
The movie is filled with mucho movie clichés, for example, a dark stormy, rainy night to set the anxious scene for the shady CIA agent following Tom Hanks, cold blizzardy snow to set the East Germany post war gloom and danger, mean/cold/evil CIA agents, a judge that doesn't care about following proper legal proceedings, WW II era German soldiers, cold and calculating Soviets, 1950's innocence in America, Commie hating Americans, unquestioning allegiance to the Military, and of course everything has to be based on a time deadline and come down to a happy ending at the last moment.
The first part of the movie made me uncomfortable because of its historical inaccuracy and exaggerations. Once I stopped looking for accuracy and reality as necessities, I settled down to just being entertained.
Gary Powers clinging to his spinning out of control U-2 was both exciting and silly. A person attached to an out of control airplane that was falling at +400 mph would be torn apart. I believe the historically accurate story was less exciting. Gary Powers ejected after his plane was hit, failed to destroy the aircraft and take his suicide pill, and was captured, to the embarrassment of the U.S.
The movie takes a long time to move through the story that we know has to have a happy ending. It's filled with almost there, then failure, then almost there again. That's the main pattern of the telling.
Tom Hanks is always Tom Hanks, no matter who he plays these days. He's no longer the intense actor we saw in "Big", "Forrest Gump", "Cast Away", or his other blockbuster masterpieces.
The overall theme of the story was a good one. Spying was considered a necessary part of the Cold War, and both sides denying that they were spying was part of the game.
History loses something in the telling.