The 4 years was the time that Abel spent in prison in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Georgia, from his arrest in 1957 until the exchange withe the Soviets for Powers.Beate wrote:I liked it but I looked at my watch quite often. It was extremely slow going and not actually too suspenseful until the end. Did I miss a title card somewhere? We started in 1957 and all of a sudden the Berlin Wall was built so we jumped four years. The lovely Sebastian Koch played the terribly mispronounced Vogel guy, and I wondered why no one at production thought subtitles were necessary for all the German spoken? Was it all self-explanatory? Because it didn't make sense that one minute they told Hanks that his passport and visa were correct and he could go through, and the next minute, in the speeding car with Vogel, they told him there was a passport problem. How come?
This could and should have been shortened in several places.
7/10
Film didn't really make that clear, nor did it really focus on the time that Forest Gump must have spent with him in getting evidence and representing him and the friendship they appeared to have forged in so doing. This would have been interesting.
I'm still mildly annoyed by that Scottish accent too. Apparently he was born in Newcastle to Russian immigrants - actually ethnic Germans from Russia, and moved to Moscow with his parents when he was 17. Also his real name was Willie Fisher! Rudolph Abel was an alias he adopted in USA.
