Would it help ? If.....

If the plot were less convoluted, it certainly would have made for a better film. Frankly, with all the liberties taken by the film, removing the subplot of Pryor would have made it far more compelling. Like most Americans at the time, I'm quite familiar with the Abel /Powers exchange since it was a huge story at the time. Admittedly, however I knew nothing of Pryor portion of the story. That said, he was merely a byproduct of a major event. Yet given the screen time devoted to him and the awful rendering of his story, it might have been beneficial to discard it,
The entire sequence of negotiations with GDR was incomprehensible. What was Vogel's angle ? What occurred in the offices of the supposed Comrade Ott, was he merely an actor ? Why the separate entities working on behalf of the USSR & GDR ? Please !
But more importantly there was no reference made to the embarrassment caused by Powers' capture. At the time of the incident Eisenhower & Khrushchev were in the midst of a summit meeting.The Russian Premier immediately seized on the shooting down of the U2 spy plane as a huge propaganda coupe, resulting in diplomatic fiasco for President Eisenhower.To have overlooked the big picture, the geopolitical implications of the story, without even a brief mention, was a major flaw in the story.