Just got back from seeing the movie Breach. It stars Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe and Laura Linney. Cooper plays Robert Hanseen, the FBI agent that was arrested for the biggest breach of security in the nation's history. Phillippe stars as Eric O'Neill, the FBI agent that helped take him down. Linney plays the agent in charge of O'Neill. The movie is directed by Billy Ray, who directed Shattered Glass.
This is not the typical spy movie. There are no car chases, gun fights or any type of secret gadgets. It is a very good movie. It is a slow building movie, you don't realize you're drawn into it until it's too late. Cooper plays Hanseen as a devout Catholic. O'Neill comes to admire and like Hanseen, who becomes something of a mentor to the younger agent at the same time the agent is trying to find evidence to link him as a spy.
There are no easy answers in this movie. Hanseen gets paid for his spying, but you realize it wasn't the money that mattered to him. At the end he mentions that another man caught as a spy might have been doing it for partriotic reasons, to try to show his country the holes in its security. You can imagine that he is really talking about himself. Hanseen was a man with a big ego, he thought he knew best in all courses, even in matters of national security. Cooper doesn't make Hanseen into something better than he was, but he does give the man a feeling of truth.
A very good movie and worth seeing.
2 comments:
Breach was good...what are your picks on the oscars? I did a oscars pick saturday..
stop by and say hi sometime
www.rickrockhill.blogspot.com
Thanks for the review on this. I like Chris Cooper a lot, having first seen him in Lonesome Dove.
Post a Comment