Breach

Fact is sometimes stranger than fiction.

 

'Breach' tells the story of how the biggest security breach in U.S. history was finally plugged. For 22 years senior FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, passed secrets to the Russians, informing them, among many other things, of the identity of U.S. spies in their midst. This led to deaths and untold damage to the U.S. intelligence agencies.

 

Writer/director, Billy Ray, is no stranger to true life tales, nor plausible cheats, having last tackled the scandal of a reporter making up his own stories for <em>The New Republican</em> in the excellent 'Shattered Glass'. 'Breach' is just as robust. With an excellent cast anchored by a magnificent Chris Cooper (even Ryan Phillippe shakes most of his Keanu Reeves mannerisms), Ray paints a picture of American 'Intel' that seems real, and for this reason it is never less than interesting. However, it is probably because of this that the audience never gets really revved up.

 

This is a very straight-forward story after all. As befits the desk-bound Hanssen (as opposed to the gun-toters he reviles), were it not for the deaths involved, this might come across as an excessively sour case of office politics gone wrong. There are no foreign agents, alluring women, cool gadgets, or over-the-top stunts. Instead we get Cooper on a desk fixing a cable to his pc modem, or asking his assistant to close the door as he obsesses over Catherine Zeta Jones videos.

 

Another problem is that, even though Hanssen is the cause of deaths, it's hard to really care about the whole tale, unless you are actually American. Spies are spies, and they know what they're getting into, and death is an occupational hazard. What matters then is who the spies are working for and whether the audience shares their sympathies. But this viewer is not American, nor does he ever want to be, so the question arises If this story concerned a traitor on the Russian side, would we be cheering on the Cooper traitor? I suppose it says as much about Euro-American relations than anything else. Personally I really don't care about cold war games between the old enemies. The world's hot enough without them.

 

In short then, 'Breach' is a solid, interesting, if unexciting, foray into the real world of espionage. Well made and performed, it is an intelligent cut above the norm. It just might be nice if there was a little more fiction to the fact.