Retro Film Review: Breach (2007)
Michael Moore might claim otherwise, but historians who work hard enough will find at least some positive achievements of George W. Bush’s presidency. One of these occurred at the very beginning of his first term and is the subject of Breach, a 2007 thriller drama directed by Billy Ray.
The film starts with documentary footage from February 2001—a press conference where then Attorney General John Ashcroft (the singing “hero” of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11) triumphantly announces the victory of US security services. The action then shifts back several months to a time when young FBI clerk Eric O'Neill (played by Ryan Phillippe), condemned to tedious surveillance tasks, dreams of becoming a special agent in the nation’s elite law enforcement agency. The opportunity for promotion appears to be a routine mission where he is sent as technical support to Robert Hanssen (played by Chris Cooper), a senior FBI agent responsible for safeguarding the most confidential information. O'Neill is actually supposed to work undercover and spy on Hanssen, whom the FBI's internal control believes to be sexually deviant. Over time, the young man manages to gain his superior's trust and, in return, becomes deeply impressed by his dedication to work, family, Catholic faith, and Opus Dei organisation. When he informs his superiors that he has seen no evidence of any secret double life, he is shocked—Hanssen is not under investigation for deviance but for giving away top national secrets to Soviet and later Russian intelligence services.
Hollywood screenwriter Billy Ray demonstrated in his 2003 directorial debut Shattered Glass how he can turn seemingly prosaic and banal true stories into exciting films. However, here he failed in that task. Just as De Niro showed in The Good Shepherd, an authentic portrayal of the world of espionage would expose viewers to an excessive dose of banality due to too many monotonous, uninteresting, and dull characters for a truly impressive film. While this can be avoided, one needs the talent of John le Carré, which Ray and his two co-writers apparently lacked.
An additional problem with the film is that it focuses exclusively on the act of capture itself, following events solely from O'Neill's perspective. As a result, the question of what motivated Hanssen remains unanswered, and many vivid details from Hanssen's biography (explicitly mentioned in documentaries and other films related to the case), which would indicate that he truly led a double life, are almost completely absent.
For all these reasons, Ray's quite impressive cast, while commendable on paper, is of little use. The only exception is veteran Chris Cooper; however, in the company of the usually cold and bland Philippe, it wasn’t difficult for him to appear as a serious Oscar contender. Nevertheless, poor characterisation also left an impression of unfulfilled potential in Cooper's case.
Another issue with Breach is its attempt to forcefully push the narrative through the prism of Hollywood ideological dogmas. Hanssen is depicted as the embodiment of everything that represents evil in 21st-century America—a white man, religious fanatic, homophobe and—what used to be and still is an unforgivable sin for Hollywood liberals—takes every opportunity to smear Bill Clinton's character and actions. However, the point of the entire story is that the system, even when headed by conservative Ashcroft, ultimately worked. The real world in Breach, as in many other cases, proved too complicated for Hollywood’s dogmatic simplicity and lack of subtlety.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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I've watched this, and I thought Hanssen was certainly enigmatic. However, it seemed to me the motivation given by the writers was ego. He was better than everyone else, in his mind. He felt underrated by the agency. He had to prove he could do it, and get away with it. That still leaves a bit of a puzzle for such an egregious lack of loyalty, but he is also portrayed as someone who lacked empathy. The way he betrayed his wife in a way parallels the way he betrayed his colleagues and country. In the end, he had sympathy only for himself. Maybe that's what it takes to be a spy, and maybe that's what the film makers were saying.😇