Breach (Widescreen Edition)

Buy This Item Breach (Widescreen Edition) by Universal Studios  Available from Amazon  $14.99  on 8-28-2008     Is a mystery really mysterious when the end isn't a secret? Is espionage still thrilling when you know beforehand that the cloak has been pulled back and the dagger revealed? If it's a film as good as <I>Breach</I>, the answer is a resounding yes. Here is a true story that's genuinely stranger than fiction: FBI agent Robert Hanssen spent over 20 years selling government secrets to the Russians, making him the most egregious traitor in U.S. history. He was an Opus Dei Catholic and a devout churchgoer who was also a sexual deviant, a straitlaced company man so trusted by his employers that they once appointed him to lead an investigation designed to reveal who the spy was--when in fact it was Hanssen himself. And in the end, he was brought down in part by 26-year-old Eric O'Neill, an agent-in-training who worked with him for just two months. Chris Cooper, a 2003 supporting actor Oscar winner for <I>Adaptation</I>, is brilliant in the lead role, playing Hanssen as a dour, cold, ultraconservative cipher (women in pantsuits are just one of his peeves) whose conversations more closely resemble interrogations. Ryan Phillippe is also excellent as O'Neill, who's initially kept in the dark by the superior (Laura Linney) who assigned him to help expose Hanssen's treachery; thinking he's been brought in only to gather evidence about his boss' sexual transgressions, O'Neill finds himself caught in a profound moral conundrum, grudgingly admiring Hanssen even as his own marriage is severely tested by the older man's creepy and hypocritical intrusion into their lives, not to mention the FBI's strict rules against discussing the case. <p>Director Billy Ray (whose previous feature was also a true story: <I>Shattered Glass</I>, about the young writer who fabricated stories for <I>The New Republic</I>) and co-screenwriters Adam Mazer and William Rotko do an extraordinary job of maintaining the tension as the story leads to the conclusion that's been revealed in the first few frames (i.e., Hanssen's arrest in February 2001); the exquisite torture of O'Neill's having to keep Hanssen distracted while Bureau technicians search the latter's car is but one example. Moreover, notwithstanding the plot developments, the filmmakers manage to keep their focus on the personal interactions that are the film's key element: the relationships that O'Neill maintains with Hanssen, his father (a cameo by Bruce Davison), his wife (Caroline Dhavernas), and others are entirely credible. At once fascinating and horrifying, <I>Breach</I> is inarguably one of the best films of 2007. <I>--Sam Graham</I> Reader Reviews They wanted to make Chris Cooper severely evil and twisted, so they made him play the whole role in smudgy pink and blue makeup, and as the movie progresses and he gets caught up in his own lies more and more, the makeup gets even more garish. At the end he looks like Marlene Dietrich in JUST A GIGOLO. They also had him implicated in a bizarre subplot with him and his wife as swingers; Caroline Dhavernas stumbles onto a videotape of the two of them having sex, and she divines instantly that Bonnie didn't know she was being taped. How is she so sure? I wasn't, especially when the wife is being played by the one and only Kathleen Quinlan, practically a neon sign for amorality in the US cinema of the 80s and 90s. (It's always great to see her back. I always think Tuesday Weld gets all the reclame that properly belongs to La Quinlan.) Anyhow with his coating of mascara and lipstick Chris Cooper's playing it as if he were the wolf disguised as Grandma in Little Red Riding Hood, so you don't need any real acting, thank God, from Ryan Phillipe, who's always good, but always wears the same bemused expression as though he had some sand in his sandals. Like everyone else, I didn't expect much going in to see this film, and was astounded when it turned out to be one of the best spy thrillers I've ever seen. I did think it was overkill however to have President David Palmer playing one of the FBI agents trying to entrap Chris Cooper! Why not just hire George Bush to play the part?

Breach (Widescreen Edition) Available from Amazon Price: $14.99 Updated on 8-28-2008.

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