Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

Excellent movie about the final days of turncoat FBI agent Robert Hanssen. For current events junkies, it seems like just yesterday that his February 2001 arrest was front page news. Looking back, it was the final coda to the Cold War, occuring just months before the long war of the current century brutally reared its head.

Chris Cooper’s powerful and compelling performance as Hanssen drives the movie. His face at the end – especially his haunted eyes – provides a singular image of both the wages of sin and the power of great movie acting.

Acting - Great 4.0

Chris Cooper – one of the great character actors working today – delivers a typically outstanding performance as the traitor Robert Hanssen. The young Ryan Phillippe mostly performs well as the wet-behind-the-ears agent assigned to shadow him. Oddly, the great Laura Linney delivers a sub-par performance as the agent-in-charge of bringing down Hanssen. Perhaps Linney isn’t this generation’s Meryl Streep, since Breach exposes the limits of her acting talent.

Film - Great 4.0

Edge - Risqué 1.9

Reality - Glib 1.2

Based on an NPR Fresh Air interview of the real Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillipe’s character), it is clear that the timing and perhaps also the sequencing of some of the events weren’t movie perfect in real life. So I’m awarding the movie a CircoReality Factor of 1.7, giving it an overall rFactor of 1.2.

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