The emotional isolation of intelligence work exacts an awful price on marriage.
Call this one the February Surprise. In this dreariest month for movie releases,
who would have expected “Breach?” Based on the true story of FBI spy Robert
Hanssen, this absorbing thriller unfolds against the background of the
entrenched bureaucracy that is the FBI. Not until 9/11 did we learn that the
Bureau is a repository for utterly outmoded computer systems. We did know
though, that J. Edgar Hoover had fashioned the Bureau to fit his warped sense of
propriety. Dark suits and white shirts were the uniform; rigid lines of command
were the norm.
When flexibility and spontaneity are
all but outlawed in a bureaucracy that needs them desperately, small power
groups form as this one did in late 2000. Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) lives
alone “I don’t even have a cat” – a perfect profile of the agent who is not
subject to blackmail and has no spouse asking her to spill the beans to him.
Kate summons Eric (Ryan Phillipe) an ambitious trainee who aspires to the title
of FBI Agent. Without telling him that she suspects Robert Hanssen of being a
double agent for the Russians, she assigns Eric to work alongside Hanssen in a
sting job. “Watch every move he makes, Eric.”
Hanssen turns out to be both a lover
of computer porn and a church going Catholic of odd dimensions. On the surface,
he is a typical FBI bureaucrat; but he pilfers top secret papers from the
bureau, wraps them tightly in garbage bags and tapes them to the underside of a
bridge near his home. He did this for more than two decades, and the extent of
what he gave the Russians over that time is still classified.
Director Billy Ray maintains an
excruciating level of tension by making every gesture and word count. Laura
Linney is fine as the no-nonsense case officer who has figured out the case but
has to prove it. Ryan Phillipe’s Eric grows beyond competitive rookie to a full
grasp of the seriousness of the case. His relationship with his wife Juliana
(Caroline Dhavernas) reminds us that the emotional isolation of intelligence
work exacts an awful price on marriage. In this movie, the resolution of this
damage is anything but a cliché.
These actors give fine support to
Chris Cooper’s restrained yet dazzling performance as the spy who never came in
from the cold. The wallop in this thriller comes largely from our desire to
figure Hanssen out. Neither director nor writer chooses to enlighten us. Why did
Hanssen sell these American secrets slowly over twenty years for more than a
million dollars? How does his devout church life fit with his mission? He caused
the death of at least three agents and compromised many more. Chris Cooper gives
a superb rendering of a man of unexplained contradictions. As a man with a sense
of inferiority, he found the one thing that would force his peers to take him
seriously: he loved being a mole.
Copyright (c) Illusion