Breach

[Corlyss_D]

I went to see it today. Damn exciting it was too. Fine performances by Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe as the young FBI operative, Eric O'Neill, planted in Hanssen's office to bring him down. The atmosphere was so claustraphobic I could hardly breathe during the film. I wasn't surprised to learn at the end that O'Neill took himself out of the Bureau after having felled the most dangerous mole in the history of the US government. As he says to his supervisor in response to her comment that his wife would get used to the strange behaviors required of agents, "I don't think I want her to."

The official movie website has a very interesting series of interviews growing largely out of a "town hall" meeting with Billy Ray, the script writer/director, and Eric O'Neill, who looks surprisingly like Ryan Phillippe, held at the Canadian Embassy on 12 Feb. The moderator, Adrian Talbott, executive director of Generation Engage (which appears to be a charity outfit designed to help poor ignorant blue-collar youth who can't go to college find out about American politics in hopes that they will some day vote in an election), made the most incredible jaw-dropping statement that Hanssen was a very sympathetic character because he was undervalued by the "bureaucracy." O'Neill correctly dismissed that fatuous characterization the instant he was handed the mike: Hanssen gets no pass for his crimes regardless of why he committed them.

Ray commented that the reason O'Neill was a "perfect lure" for Hanssen is because as a young inexperienced operative full of himself, O'Neill had the same complaints about FBI bureaucracy that Hanssen did. As soon as O'Neill begins to chafe at his assignment (basically to surveil a pornography addict downloading porn on government time) because he thinks Hanssen has a better grasp of what's wrong with the Bureau than management does, O'Neill's suprevisors bring him in on his real mission. From that moment on, the manner in which Ray protrays the FBI is dynamic and purposeful and competent. Ray's POV is refreshing.

The interviews are very interesting and provide excellent breadth to the portrayals.

[Ralph]

With a week off from teaching this one is high on my list.

[Corlyss_D]

With a week off from teaching this one is high on my list.

I hope you will provide us with a review.

[Ralph]

With a week off from teaching this one is high on my list.

I hope you will provide us with a review.

*****

Yeah. I have to see "Dream Girls" today because a friend who's going through a really messy divorce wants to catch a "light" flick.

[Ralph]

I saw "Breach" last night and it's an engrossing story with Chris Cooper really inhabiting the role of Robert Hanssen, the FBI traitor. Cooper's Hanssen is a complex bundle of contradictions: sexual perversion coupled with devout Catholicism rejecting Vatican II while selling for dollars to the atheistic Soviets.

Laura Linney is also fine as the agent supervising the investigation into Hanssen's nefarious acitvities. Washington scenes are well-shot.

Definitely worth seeing.

[Corlyss_D]

devout Catholicism

I almost fell out of my seat when he said his wife had converted him to Catholicism. Those converts, boy! You gotta watch out for them - they take it way too seriously.