Patriotic, feel-good movie by Spielberg. All characters except Col. Rudolf Abel (W. Fisher) wonderfully played by Mark Rylance of the "Wolf Hall" fame and, to a lesser extent, Wolfgang Vogel, are cutout puppets. Shame on you, Br. Coen! Despite a brilliant cast (Tom Hanks, Alan Alda, etc.) they all play formulaic versions of what is expected of them. Especially cheesy is the scene when Amy Ryan, recognizing that her husband--not having an affair, G-d forbid, but wasting his time on a fishery in Ireland--weeps at his prostrate, sleeping and drunk body when he is revealed to be on an important Government mission.
P.S. Spielberg decided that the Cold War somehow moved East Berlin to Siberia. It is shown in deep snow when orchards bloom in New York City. Equally bizarre are the scenes of Abel-Fisher's fake family in the Soviet Embassy. His wife was a concert harpist and definitely would dress in a gown rather than babushkas. East Berlin in 1963 looks like a WWII ruin. Did Spielberg or Coens ever looked at the photos of the DDR? Probably not, otherwise our Ministry of Truth Commissariat (Samantha Power, Vicky Nuland, Cristiana Amanpour, etc.) would make a cheese sauce out of person even with Spielberg's stature.
