WhatzUp

Breach
by Derek Neff

Is there anyone better suited than Chris Cooper to play Robert Philip Hanssen, the real-life FBI agent who leaked countless classified documents to the Soviets for over two decades, resulting in the worst breach of U.S. security in the history of the country? Cooper has made a rich career out of playing brilliant but emotionally stunted individuals with dark secrets, and his performance as Hanssen is a tour de force. A devout Catholic, family man, beloved grandfather and respected agent specializing in Soviet intelligence, Hanssen is/was also a double agent who shared top-secret documents with his Soviet contacts in exchange for cash and diamonds, a misanthropist who felt bitter about having to end his career in "an office without a window" and a creep who shared with other men videotapes of himself having sex with his wife (unbeknownst to his ultra-religious wife). With his reddish, rheumy eyes and his almost reptilian smirk, Cooper slithers and glides his way through this role unforgettably.

The time is early 2001. Unaware that he has become the subject of the largest ongoing investigation in the entire FBI, Hanssen grudgingly accepts the assistance of an ambitious young intel operative named Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe), ostensibly placed with Hanssen because of their shared interest in computers. In truth, though, O'Neill has been assigned to work under Hanssen in order to spy on him. It is the hope of the head agent investigating the case (played by Laura Linney) that, armed with the information O'Neill digs up, they will be able to catch Hanssen in the act of committing treason, a capital offense.

Breach has no eye-grabbing action scenes, no high speed car chases, no gun battles, no high-tech gadgetry. It's not terribly suspenseful, either (we know from the get-go that Hanssen is guilty, and that he ultimately gets caught) but the story being told is so inherently interesting (all the more so for being true) that director Billy Ray wisely realizes he need do little more than stick to the facts and let events unfold in a naturalistic, straightforward way to hold our attention. The movie is all about these two characters, Hanssen and O'Neill, squaring off against each other. Like his last film, the extraordinary Shattered Glass, Ray brilliantly dissects the mind of a talented person getting himself deeper and deeper into deception (even if, unlike the fraudulent young journalist in that movie, we at no point have any sympathy for Hanssen). The results are fascinating, if not particularly earth-shattering. But boy oh boy is Chris Cooper ever good here.