A Stately Treatment

Rating: 5/10 (22 March 2016)

I put off seeing this film since I knew the true story too well and expected to be annoyed by various changes made necessary to get the whole spy saga into two hours.
The movie, for instance, begins with Col. Abel's arrest, thus skipping over what people like me go to a spy movie for--tense scenes of espionage and spy craft. The character of Abel is made to be world weary, but without evidence of his cleverness as a spy it's less interesting as a Cold War tale.
I learned a lot about the Colonel writing a NY Times story about his life posing in Brooklyn as an artist, and then I requested his interrogation transcripts from the FBI, which they sent me in several boxes running to 3,000 pages. None of this was available to previous authors.
If fans of the movie would like further background on Col. Abel's double life in America, I have written a Kindle ebook, THE AMATEUR: The Cold War Life of Rudolf Abel, Artist & KGB Spy.