Details

Release year: 2015

Storyline

During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

Top credits

Directors

Steven Spielberg

Writers

Cast

Tom Hanks — James B. Donovan
Mark Rylance — Rudolf Abel
Alan Alda — Thomas Watters Jr.
Amy Ryan — Mary Donovan

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Awards

1 win & 5 nominations

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Did you know

• Soviet agent Rudolf Ivanovich Abel sent and received coded messages that were hidden inside such things as hollow U.S. coins, bolts, and batteries. The FBI first became aware of Abel's activities in 1953, when Abel's incompetent junior colleague Reino Hayhanen carelessly spent a hollow nickel that ended up in the hands of a paperboy. The Brooklyn newsboy who got the nickel thought it felt too light. He dropped the nickel on the sidewalk, and it popped open, revealing a piece of microfilm with a coded message inside. After Hayhanen's blunders, Abel lost confidence in him and sent him back to the U.S.S.R., which would not have gone well for Hayhanen, who defected in 1957. He showed the FBI how to crack the code and it was Hayhanen who gave up Rudolf Abel. The "Hollow Nickel Case" was also dramatized in The FBI Story (1959).

• Rudolf Ivanovich Abel's seemingly incongruous accent was accurate. Abel (real name: William August Fisher) was born and raised in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Russian emigre parents. Together with his family, he returned to Moscow in 1921 at age 18, but never lost his accent when speaking English.

• For the scene outside the courtroom, the photographers were initially instructed to put their used flashbulbs, which are extremely hot to the touch, in their pockets. One of the background actors happened to be the historian of the New York Press Photographers Association. He told executive producer and first assistant director Adam Somner that, at the time, photographers would have ejected the bulbs onto the floor. After several takes, noticing the bulbs strewn across the floor, Steven Spielberg decided to shoot the low-angle view of the principals walking through them.