Review: Breach


Ryan Phillippe (a pretty underrated actor, in my view) is a young hotshot FBI recruit looking for his big break, he gets it when pushy senior officer Laura Linney assigns him to work as a clerk for the infamous, surly, (and infamously surly) Agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper). But his real mission is to get the dirt on the man, a supposed sexual deviant. What Phillippe finds is something more complex and shocking than even that. Kathleen Quinlan is Hanssen’s ‘perfect’ wife, Bruce Davison has a cameo as Phillippe’s military man father, while Dennis Haysbert (who never quite capitalised on the exposure he got on “24” and in “Far From Heaven”) and Gary Cole play agents.

 

Full of excellent performances and a fascinating and shocking story based on truth, but the main thing you’ll remember about this 2007 Billy Ray (the underrated “Shattered Glass”, also based on a true story about a guy who wasn’t all that he seemed) film is the brilliant performance and complex characterisation by Cooper. In fact, one of the few flaws in the film is that we find this guy so fascinating (Staunch Catholic, conservative, devoted family man, anti-Red, contemptuous, paranoid, perverted, probable hypocrite) that we want to know more. Also, when you find out about his kinky side…well, it didn’t seem all that kinky to me (I was expecting either animals or children to be involved), and I wasn’t even sure about Quinlan’s role in the situation. But those are fairly minor flaws, this is engrossing stuff from start to end, and all the more shocking for being based on a true story. The story apparently broke early in 2001, not the best year to be found seriously compromising the national security of the United States! Scripted by Adam Mazer, William Rotko and the director, the real story is infamous in the States (many consider him a villain on the same level as Osama Bin Laden), but I didn’t hear about it in the Southern hemisphere, and thus it may seem more fresh and fascinating to the uninitiated like me.

 

Rating: B-

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