Testa's Takes: 'Breach'

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

By Matthew Testa

‘Breach’

Directed by Billy Ray; written by Adam Mazer, William Rotko and Mr. Ray
With: Chris Cooper (Robert Hanssen), Ryan Phillippe (Eric O’Neill), Laura Linney (Kate Burroughs), Dennis Haysbert (Dean Plesac), Caroline Dhavernas (Juliana O’Neill), Gary Cole (Rich Garces), Bruce Davison (John O’Neill) and Kathleen Quinlan (Bonnie Hanssen)
Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content and language.

The shadowy, secretive world of spies and counterintelligence is the perfect terrain for fiction writers and filmmakers precisely because we know so little about it. It’s the job of spies, after all, to operate entirely undetected for their entire lifetimes without even their spouses knowing what they’re up to on those business trips to Moscow or Dubai.

This has given storytellers license to perpetuate the longstanding James Bond myth of glamorous assignments, exotic adventures and shaken martinis.

But in “Breach,” based on the true story of mole Robert Hanssen, director Billy Ray depicts the FBI that Hanssen betrayed as a Kafkaesque, sputtering bureaucracy about as exotic as a trip to the DMV.

Now serving a life sentence for espionage, Hanssen was a mid-level desk jockey at the Bureau who sold secrets to the Soviet Union, and then the Russians, for two decades. The information he handed over – usually as documents wrapped in plastic garbage bags and left in a Virginia park – compromised the identities of American agents abroad and led to the murders of at least two of them.

Hanssen sold the secrets for money (he netted at least $1.4 million), but as portrayed by the terrific Chris Cooper, he may have also been motivated by resentment of an agency that repeatedly let him down.

Cooper plays Hanssen as a brilliant, arrogant and bitter company man who has come to despise the organization he’s been so loyal to. Who can’t relate to that?  

Not only doesn’t Hanssen suffer fools, he annihilates them. And while his suggestions for making improvements to security at the bureau may be correct, his lack of personal skills has landed him in a dismal basement office – his wisdom treated more as a nuisance than a help.

Undoubtedly one of the best American actors working today, Cooper is flawless in this role. He keeps his face tight and in a permanent scowl. He’s beleaguered by both the incompetence around him and the dark secrets of his own transgressions.

This is a man whose sense of superiority is matched only by his gnawing guilt, and it has soured him beyond repair. But as a master of secrets, Hanssen keeps it all buried deep, and Cooper conveys this with optimal depth and restraint.

Realizing that Hanssen may be the mole in their organization, a team of FBI heavies led by agent Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) send in a mole of their own. Burroughs assigns a driven young agent-in-training, Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillipe), to work under Hanssen. She tells O’Neill that Hanssen is under suspicion for sexual deviance, perhaps using the office internet connection to traffic pornography.

O’Neill realizes immediately it won’t be easy to fool the smart, experienced and paranoid Hanssen. And he begins to wonder why he’s even been given this assignment. Hanssen seems innocent enough – devoutly Christian, a patriot’s patriot, an unpopular but ingenious sourpuss awaiting retirement.

O’Neill even starts to respect his new boss. When Burroughs reveals the real reason for his assignment, the stakes for O’Neill change completely. Now it’s the young apprentice who must fool the master spy.

Some of the cat-and-mouse scenes that ensue between Hanssen and O’Neill are terrific nail-biters. Only one involves a gun and the threat of physical harm. The others, more interesting by far, derive their tension from the psychological risks of lying and being lied to many times over.

These situations must have been heart-pounding for the real-life O’Neill (who was a consultant on the film). For all his flaws, Hanssen was a skilled agent and a walking polygraph machine.

As the film conveys, Hanssen wanted to believe in his young protégé, wanted to connect with him. It’s in this that we can sympathize with Cooper’s character. In every lie there is a strand of truth. And believing in liars, incongruously, often betrays a faith in honesty.
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Testa's Takes: 'Breach' | Planet JH News Article: Movie Reviews

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