Naturally the Air Force Loves It--Bad History

Rating: 8/10 (20 October 2015)

One reviewer saw this movie with Air Force brass, who naturally loved it, but almost everything related to the 1950s U-2 program is flat wrong without any obvious reason for the errors. President Eisenhower specifically directed the CIA to develop and manage the program with "civilian" pilots to avoid committing acts of war by sending military aircraft over foreign countries. Pilots were required to resign from the Air Force, certainly didn't wear uniforms, and were trained at Area 51 (now officially acknowledged) and certainly not in Peshawar Pakistan. Only accurate bits were the grease pencil number on Powers' helmet (they were obviously custom fitted) and the fact that he couldn't destroy the cameras because he got sucked out of the cockpit. All that being said: a great story, great character study, great acting, great if momentary homage to the immortal Billy Wilder and his much more accurate depiction of 1961 Berlin: "Eins, Zwei, Drei" aka "One Two Three." Wilder too presents German dialogue without subtitles, but with him it's much funnier and no less pointed.
Well worth watching, especially for Hanks and Rylance, but keep in mind that its no more "history" than Oliver Stone's "JFK." (JFK got shot, Powers got shot down and swapped for Abel.) BTW: Powers got screwed by both the CIA and Air Force, with Kelly Johnson of Lockheed's Skunk Works the only person to stand by him. That's why he wound up flying a traffic copter and running out of gas in 1977. I was there in 2000 when Brigadier General Kevin Chilton, commanding the USAF 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in northern California, gave his son Gary Jr those medals as a way of assuaging the government's guilty conscience.