Breach

The real-life story of how veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen was finally exposed and brought to justice as a longtime Russian spy is fascinating stuff. In the hands of filmmaker Billy Ray, it is both detective story with espionage elements and character study with hints of political and cultural subtext. But Breach only fitfully makes good on its apparent potentials. Played with chilly brilliance by Chris Cooper, the movie’s Hanssen looms as a monstrous and perhaps impenetrable set of paradoxes—devout Catholic, Machiavellian master spy, bland family man, mad genius, sexual hypocrite. The key FBI investigators in the case, young Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) and his boss Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney), are portrayed as getting caught up in the soul-draining nature of their work, but their portion of the film feels generic and, with Phillippe in particular, unconvincing. A stellar supporting cast (Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole, Dennis Haysbert, Kathleen Quinlan, Bruce Davison) gets little opportunity to add real substance.