Higher intelligence

>> Chris Cooper is brilliant as a disgraced
FBI agent in the subtle spy thriller Breach

by MARK SLUTSKY

Director Billy Ray’s 2003 film Shattered Glass, about the fabricating journalist Stephen Glass and how he successfully hoodwinked The New Republic, may be one of the best movies about journalism ever made, and it’s certainly one of my favourite films of the decade. So I was excited to learn that his next film, Breach, would operate within a similar milieu. If Shattered Glass took the viewer into the insider world of the Washington press, Breach looked to do the same for the community of spies and intelligence-gatherers that operate in the same city.

Based on a true story, Breach stars Ryan Phillippe as rookie FBI agent Eric O’Neill. Eager to attain full agent status, he jumps at the chance when he’s approached by higher-up Laura Linney to work on an important case. He’s to act as assistant to Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), a computer genius and a cantankerous, legendary agent. But, according to Linney, he’s also somewhat of a pervert, and the FBI is worried about the implications of his proclivity for Internet porn.

As Phillippe works for the man, he begins to admire him: He’s outspoken, doesn’t cow to authority and sees through the inter-agency politicking that seems to make up so much intelligence work. He’s a devoted Catholic and family man, and he’s very, very intelligent. But then Linney brings him in on the real case: Hanssen had been slipping secrets to the Soviets for decades. They’re there to bring him down—to outsmart one of their smartest men. (Hanssen, incidentally, does turn out to be a perv, and, in a hilarious touch, is erotically obsessed with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment.)

Ray takes you into it all with the same deftness and intelligence he showed in Shattered Glass. It doesn’t hurt that Chris Cooper, who is always great, gives a truly incredible and nuanced performance here: he creates a fascinating and enigmatic character, a real career highlight. But that takes us to the movie’s one real weakness. While I’ve enjoyed Ryan Phillippe before, he just doesn’t hold his own against Cooper here. You’re supposed to believe his character can hold his own against the near-omniscient Hanssen, and it’s just a hard sell. But that dramatic failing aside, Breach is a terrific and subtle spy movie, more Le Carré than Ludlum.

Breach opens this Friday, Feb. 16