BREACH

Director: Billy Ray (Shatterd Glass, also successful screenwriter)
Starring: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillipe, Laura Linney


I am a Chris Cooper fan. Oh, I can certainly appreciate urbane, intellectual actors, but I'll take a gritty and down-to-earth Chris Cooper type over them any day of the week. Ever since the John Sayles' masterpieces Matewan and (10 years later) LoneStar, I've followed each of his films with interest. Breach is by no means the best film in his repertoire, but he nonetheless gives another very good, if workmanlike, performance in it.

Breach is the film adaptation of the Robert Hanssen events. Hanssen, if you missed the story, was one of the most prominent spies for our enemies in US history. At least he was of those that we eventually found out about and caught. The reality is that the true story of Robert Hanssen is far more interesting than the film, but I suppose that's what the film exists for, to interest us enough to search out the real events.

In the film Hanssen (Cooper) is a lifetime FBI man under suspician for espionage. In a massive sting operation, the FBI chooses to insert a young agent (Phillipe) as his assistant. At first he is asked to simply watch and listen, to report on how Hanssen is behaving. Later as the events ratchet up, he is called to collect information, or to divert him while others do. Each attempt is more dangerous than the last, until eventually Hanssen begins to suspect Phillipe.

What I find interesting about the real Hannsen is certainly mentioned in the film, but it is never really investigated, so to speak, by the screenplay. Hannssen was a devout Republican. He was a devout law and order man. He was a devout Catholic (so much so that he joined Opus Dei). He also happened to sell secrets to the Soviet Union, giving names of Russian double agents that resulted in their deaths. He also happened to be a bit of a sexual pervert, letting friends watch via closed circuit cameras while he had sex with his wife. Was his overt life all a sham? I doubt it. I tend to think he really believed in his law and order, and Catholocism, and conservatism. Just like most hypocrits, I don't think he really understood what it was he actually believed or maybe even what it means to believe, and so then he just believed all the harder to compensate.

In Breach, however, these questions are not really asked or answered. Cooper simply does these things, there isn't a why. He takes Phillipe under his wings to go to daily mass, and he sells secrets to the barbaric and repressive Soviet Union. He complains about his lack of advancement in the macho, gun culture of the FBI, but he despises Hillary Clinton and her pants-wearing female ilk.

Through it all Cooper plays it straight. Yes, he plays this twisted, confused man straight as an arrow. It's an interesting choice, but I think it only partly works. We certainly question (just like with the real Hanssen) how this man can have this duplicitous nature, but there isn't quite enough interest generated for us to *really* care. I find it curious how this man operates, but I'm not sure if it's all that entertaining or intriguing.

In the end this is a good film, but one that will likely be quickly forgotten.

Standouts: Cooper in another good performance. The real case of Robert Hanssen - far more interesting than the movie.
Blowouts: The dry, straight-as-an-arrow direction and production.

Grade: B-