Breach

Breach Features Perpetual Suspense, Moral Ambiguities
Breach is a nerve-wracking thriller. Based on a true story, its characters are nearly archetypical, a fact that gives the film, along with its extensive moral ambiguities, haunting power. Here, it's impossible to get away from the big themes: religion, sexuality, psychology, and professionalism are at full and merciless play.

The film is plot and character-driven, without any special effects gloss. Most of it consists of dialogue between Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) and Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe). O'Neill is assigned to keep tabs on Hanssen, providing detailed reports to Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney). Mysterious deadlines loom, and Hanssen, a veteran of Cold War politics, is a tad suspicious of all the goings-on. Hanssen and O'Neill move from room to room, situation to situation; each scene adds a layer of suspense. Further, both men have intriguing and complex moral selves. These selves are illuminated via startling combinations of beliefs and personality traits...

Former Spy Rates This Movie Superb
I served as a spy for CIA on three clandestine tours, and one of my headquarters tours was in counterintelligence, where I got to know just how un-seriously CIA takes that topic. The dirty little secret at CIA is that Ames was not the only traitor, a brand new career trainee gave up ten or so of our Soviet agents in place, all killed. In this movie, the damage that Hansen did is severely over-stated, and the facts of the matter are not as they should be, but I still give this a five star rating because the movies is absolutely top notch on the personality details.

This movie is much superior to The Good Shepard. The only other spy movies that really come close are those featuring Alec Guiness as George Smiley.

The reviewers that cannot understand motive will never understand spys and traitors. One line in this movie really grabbed me--in it, Hansen talks about how "the US can be likened to a powerfully built but retarded child." Throughout the movie, Hansen...

Tense, Layered, Incisive Game of Cat-and-Mouse in the F.B.I..
When Robert Hanssen was arrested in 2001 for espionage, he was the biggest betrayer of his country in United States history. He was also one of the very few who did it for reasons other than money. "Breach" introduces us to Hanssen and the world that he inhabited at the F.B.I. through the story of Eric O'Neill, who spent 2 months working closely with Hanssen in order to obtain evidence against him. This account is fictionalized in some aspects, but it strives to be a character study of sharp, duplicitous Hanssen as well as a tense, compelling drama. F.B.I. surveillance operative Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe) is assigned by Special Agent Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) to work under Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), a talented 25-year veteran agent, allegedly in order to find evidence that Hanssen is a pornographer. Eric comes to respect Hanssen's maverick ways and insight in spite of his gruff, threatening manner and eventually questions the case against his boss.

The scenario...

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