ISSUE 20 - FILM REVIEW

Breach

2001 was not a kind year for the U.S. intelligence community, specifically the F.B.I. Seven months prior to 9/11 Robert Ashcroft spoke about the betrayal of agent Robert Hanssen. He was caught selling secrets to the Soviets in what became the biggest spy scandal in American history. To this day the full extent of damage to the U.S. is still unknown. Monetary estimates are in the billions and several foreign agents were executed as a result. What’s more bizarre are the reasons behind Hanssen’s betrayal.
Hanssen spent the bulk of his career breaking codes and surveying Soviet spies, clocking more time than any other agent in the Bureau. He was bitter about advancement of fellow agents, never able to politic within the bureau or play “the game.” But his secret behavior explains what the federal charges could not. The agent grew intoxicated at the allure of the spy game, romanticizing James Bond and fancied himself a super spy. He also videotaped having sex with his wife and showed the tapes to a close friend.
In Breach, Chris Cooper (Capote, Adaptation) is stellar as the irritable and untrusting Hanssen. His performance towers above Ryan Phillippe, who portrays Eric O’Neill, the agent who spies on Hanssen for the F.B.I. O’Neill struggles to balance home life and spying, calling Hanssen boss and sir only. It’s demeaning and O’Neill is left in the dark for weeks until finally confronting his superiors to find out that the Bureau has set up an entire office to watch Hanssen. For years, Hanssen was assigned to catch a suspected mole in the F.B.I. when all along it was him.
Breach does well to show Hanssen as controlling and two sided. Entering the floor for work O’Neill looks down two adjacent hallways wondering which way to go. It’s a visual cue to suggest the double life agents are sometimes forced to live, that O’Neill must live in order to catch Hanssen. It also signifies the choices people make, the foresight we have control over but do not choose.
Breach is a solid film, well written and beautifully shot by Tak Fujimoto (Silence of the Lambs, Breakfast Club). Fujimoto’s work is always colorful without going overboard, making real life surroundings seem more appealing than they seem. Government buildings aren’t generally interesting to look at but production designer Wynn Thomas (Do the Right Thing) makes much of the sparseness of Hanssen’s offices. Visually speaking, everything is uniform and trim, plain in color. Thomas’ work reinforces the isolation of Hanssen’s life as well as O’Neill’s, who lives in a small apartment with a new wife that must be kept in the dark. The offices are plain and devoid of personality.
In an early scene, O’Neill struggles to repair a computer, illuminating the lack of adequate equipment the Bureau had during the Clinton years. Another scene shows the exchange of photographs on each floor, the photos of presidents Clinton and Bush in 2000. Hanssen enters to find O’Neill still working on the computer hard drive, berating him for doing so. He bites at O’Neill, telling him to get a new one off the pallet in the hallway. Outside there are stacks of new Dell computers. Hanssen complains throughout Breach of the Bureau’s inability to operate effectively. It leaves a lasting ambiguity of why he betrayed a country he worried so much about.
Where Breach fails is its inability to show Hanssen outside of the dominating agent and as a staunch Catholic. He comes off as flat and veiled when he was clearly more, for better or worse. While watching Breach Hanssen is portrayed as a tough bastard to work for, as untrusting, and then the veil is lifted and we are told he’s a spy. But we see little of his double life, shown only in voice over consisting of letters he wrote to the Soviets and a snippet of a sex home movie. Cooper is sensational but it would have been interesting to have seen from Hanssen’s side versus the plasticity the film displays.

- Brian Tucker