Breach

“Breach”

USA. 2007. Directed by Billy Ray. Story by Adam Mazer and William Rotko. Screenplay by Adam Mazer, William Rotko and Billy Ray. Starring: Chris Cooper, Ryan Philippe, Laura Linney, Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole and Dennis Haysbert.

Rating: ★★★

“Breach” opens with an archival news clip from February 2001 of Attorney General Ashcroft announcing in public that Robert Hanssen, who was responsible for the greatest security breach in United States history, has just been captured. The irony in the film is that it takes yet another thicket of deception to finally arrive at that fact. In the world of espionage and intelligence, the movie seems to suggest, there are only lies and even more lies and the only thing that crucially matters in the end is which side those lies are protecting.

Some people, particularly those who are not familiar with the original story, will feel that the film loses some of its suspense because it reveals the capture of Hanssen from the very start. But this crucial piece of information is necessary in a movie that really uses the espionage thriller to build an effective morality play. Most spy thrillers show the layers of intrigue and intricacies in the inception and development of an espionage mission. This film shows the process of how those layers must be broken down to capture a cunning traitor and the insurmountable toll it takes on the people involved.

We are first introduced to Eric O’Neill (Ryan Philippe), an FBI trainee with aspirations of becoming an agent. He starts out doing mostly surveillance work on suspected arms dealers and terrorists but FBI agent supervisor Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) calls him in on a seemingly mundane assignment: to watch on Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) as his clerk and detect any peculiarities including his suspected sexual deviance. Eric at first cannot understand the purpose of his assignment, as he sees nothing wrong with Hanssen who religiously goes to Catholic Church and is a family man with his wife, Bonnie (Kathleen Quinlan) and his kids. That is, until Kate, along with fellow agents, Rich Garces (Gary Cole) and Dan Plesac (Dennis Haysbert), finally informs him that he is believed to be a double agent who has been selling secrets to the Russians for years.

From this point on, the movie develops into a cat-and-mouse duel between two men throwing lies after lies like spears. Cooper, who can beguile and project pain at turns in the blink of an eye, is a good choice for Hanssen, a treacherous man who has so comfortably settled himself and everyone he knows into his self-righteous web of deceit. Philippe’s role is equally tricky as the younger supposed clerk and protégé who must dig for the truth in his mark while giving back very little of his own. Their interplay crackles in some effective, suspenseful scenes such as when Eric has to make up a consistent story to keep Hanssen from going back to his car that the FBI agents are searching through for incriminating evidence.

What makes the film more interesting is how Eric fools Hanssen by tapping into a common human weakness: guilt. Being a churchgoer, Hanssen, despite his double life, does have a grasp and understanding of what guilt is. What we don’t know and the movie wisely doesn’t hint at is which part of his double life he feels penitent about when he later breaks down and cries while praying at a confessional.

Eric’s line of work inevitably starts to affect his marriage with Julianna (Caroline Dhavernas), no less because she is frustrated with Hanssen’s insistence on bringing the couple to church and imposing their religious beliefs on them. Moreover, his wall of secrecy builds an ever greater distance from his wife and his professional life spills over into his personal life in unexpected ways. After a series of frustrations and concerns on her part, there is a surprising scene where he himself is duped by her into revealing a secret about Hanssen. If honesty is supposed to be the best policy within a marriage, the movie seems to argue that people who work in intelligence live with bucking that trend or turn it into a game of mistrust.

The director is Billy Ray, whose previous effort, “Shattered Glass” was about a group of honest journalists trying to sniff out a suave liar in their midst. The heroes in “Breach” are devoted people who must live in a web of deceit everyday so that the country’s citizens can make an honest living. And when they go home and pray, they have no idea how much deception to admit to or what they really feel sorry about.