By Michael Belmont

Gargoyle senior editor


Posted Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007, The OG, arts

IT'S A SIGN of impending adulthood when Hollywood starts making movies about historical events that you can remember unfolding in real life.

For most Uni students, “Breach,” which details the crucial evidence-gathering that led to the 2001 arrest of notorious FBI traitor Robert Hanssen, will be one of the first of those films.

Unfortunately for the makers of “Breach,” we impressionable young viewers will remember it more as a coming-of-age experience than as an actual cinematic great. Besides Chris Cooper's masterful performance as Hanssen, there's nothing special about director Billy Ray's historical fiction/spy drama hybrid.

Ryan Phillippe plays the real character Eric O' Neill, an underling in the rat race to make agent who was assigned to work as Hanssen's clerk in order to spy on him. Laura Linney is Kate Burroughs, O'Neill's superior on the case, and Caroline Dhavernas turns in a quality supporting performance as O'Neill's East German wife, Juliana.

As a whole, the cast surrounding Cooper is adequate but easily overshadowed by him.

Although the final product is respectable, the approach that “Breach” takes to the Hanssen saga limits what it can accomplish. By focusing on the tedious construction of the case against the most notorious traitor in U.S. intelligence history, the film misses a golden opportunity to take a closer look at Hanssen himself, who in actuality was an intriguingly enigmatic character. It chooses instead to center around O'Neill, which reduces its uniqueness and retards its scope.

Even as it is, “Breach” is largely driven by its relatively sparse examination of Hanssen and his fascinating personal contradictions, and you have to wonder how great it could have been if Cooper had been given a larger spotlight by screenwriters Ray, Adam Mazer, and William Rotko.

The final formula falls short of potential, creating a product that's neither exciting enough to be a great spy thriller nor deep enough to be a first-rate psychological profile, when there was strong enough factual material for it to have been both.

Maybe because the actual events depicted in the movie only took place a few years ago, some of the dialogue, especially early on, seems too polished and contrived to have its roots in the reality that we were just recently presented on the news. If enough time had passed for more of the details about Hanssen's actual crimes to become declassified, Ray and his fellow screenwriters would have had more substance to work with as well.

Still, anyone who can remember debating whether or not Hanssen deserved the death penalty for spying for the Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation, would find “Breach” worthwhile, if not spectacular.

Hanssen's quirks — his staunch Catholicism and morality juxtaposed with his private lecherousness, his firm patriotism masking his secret treachery, his resentment of superiors he deemed inferior to himself — are captured well, though the movie never ventures any deeper into his psyche than that. Even if you don't walk out of the theater understanding Hanssen, you'll at least be more interested in him.

“Breach” is now playing at Beverly Cinema 18 (click here for times), and Savoy 16 (click here for times). Runtime: 110 minutes. Rated: PG-13.

Note: The image used in this review comes from the download section of the film's official site (see below for link).

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— The film's official site