Not needing to rely on the usual overheated clichés or epic scope of the spy genre for drama, a fact-based bureaucrat’s thriller traces the most destructive case of internal espionage ever to shake Washington. And it’s more than worth getting into this “Breach.”
Today’s lean and tense — if conventionally action-free — account focuses on the secret two-month investigation leading up to the bust of notorious FBI traitor and Northern Virginia neighbor Robert Hanssen in early 2001. But it works best as a fascinating character study of an incomprehensibly contradictory personality, as played by the brilliant chameleon-like Oscar winner Chris Cooper (“Adaptation”).
Why did a distinguished 25-year veteran Commie expert in the Bureau, a daily attendee of a firmly traditional Catholic congregation and stanch family man turn out to be a mercenary double agent responsible for causing the torture and death of our undercover operatives and untold strategic harm to the country?
Why did a model of pristine conservative values and public service spend his leisure time surreptitiously recording and disseminating homemade porn tapes of his devout wife (Kathleen Quinlan) in the throes of, er, passion?
As directed and co-written by Billy Ray — behind the similarly compelling docudrama of another corrupt D.C. desk jockey, at the New Republic Magazine, in “Shattered Glass” — the “why” questions are posed and theories are posited. But that running, unanswerable conundrum keeps “Breach” an engaging mystery as the narrative of how he was caught unfolds.
Much of the credit for Hanssen’s undoing, as it turns out, goes to an ambitious then-clerk at the FBI, Eric O’Neill, portrayed with sharpness and dynamism by emerging leading man Ryan Phillippe (“Flags of Our Fathers”). The script follows how O’Neill was recruited to be Hanssen’s assistant aspart of a major sting operation being set up by loyal civil servant types played by the appropriately sober Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert of “24” and Gary Cole. O’Neill becomes the hero to root for as this little fish tries to remain covert in his effort to help bring down America’s biggest whale/scumbag while still preserving his young marriage.
Weirdly, the most crucial and exciting events of the locally filmed piece take place inside a windowless suite of downtown offices, in a traffic jam on Rock Creek Parkway and out in the Fairfax suburbs — not exactly your typical venues of sensational cinematic grandeur. But, somehow, an attempt to download a BlackBerry’s memory or steam open an envelope has great power when the stakes are so high and a movie is that well done.
So if you liked “Norbit,” you probably won’t like “Breach.” That’s endorsement enough.
‘Breach’
Starring: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney
Director: Billy Ray
Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content and language
