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Breach (2007)

Director: Billy Ray

Time Out rating

Average user rating

8 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Every office has its secrets, but covert skulduggery becomes an issue of national security in the corridors of the FBI headquarters. Based on a notorious real-life case, this impressively grown-up blend of spy-movie suspense and probing character study begins with keen-as-mustard junior agent Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) getting the unlovely task of spying on his new boss, veteran Russian intelligence expert Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), to assess suspicions that he’s a sex pervert. As it turns out, Hanssen the devout Catholic has indeed been sharing videos of his kinky activities in the marital bed, but that’s not the least of the man’s contradictions: a loyal career officer, often abrasively critical of lax security standards, he’s also in the illicit pay of the Russians.

Phillippe delivers one of his more substantial performances as the blue-eyed boy terrified he’s going to screw up his first major assignment, yet Cooper simply owns this movie, reptilian and unknowable in a performance that’s an odds-on bet for Oscar attention. He’s well served too, by writer director Billy Ray, who looks as though he’s been studying his Jean-Pierre Melville, methodically taking us through the agency’s everyday routine to build nerve-shredding tension later on when the narrowest time window becomes available to search Hanssen’s office. As a thriller, a seemingly rather plain movie becomes gripping almost by stealth, yet there are broader issues at stake too, for the security services’ inability to ‘read’ a given individual not only dissolves the certainties essential for their work, it also challenges our own assumptions (on celluloid and in life) of the integrity of human character. Tense, fascinating, worthwhile.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 1932: August 29-September 4 2007

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User reviews of this film

Technoguy said...

Posted on Mar 04 2009 00:01 It's not in the same class as Shattered Glass
his previous film and gets nowhere near
The Conversation. because it sticks so closely to the true story literally it seems to run out of steam quite soon,despite Chris Cooper's inalienable
right to act the role and Ryan Phillipe's sterling
support. The film does capture the uneasy tension
between Eric and Hansen as they size each other up
and Hansen runs truth tests on Eric. Eric finds his
mission to find out about Hansen's sexual deviancy
is a ploy for his real mission: to help trap the
biggest double agent in America's history,but he's
got to be caught in the act of making a drop, otherwise their evidence will be deniable. The film doesn't really explain why a Catholic family man
would betray his country in the way Hansen did. He does come to trust Eric but only after putting him and his wife through the severest of trials as a couple.

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wolf72 said...

Posted on Apr 12 2008 23:53 I feel as though I have just wasted a small part of my life! This is the slowest and most unengaging film I have ever seen! Usually live and die by time out reviews but this one falls well short of the mark! It is POOR!

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Dave said...

Posted on Jan 06 2008 16:29 The comment you type in here will appear on the site

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sally said...

Posted on Sep 12 2007 07:35 Excellent. Sense of suspense held all the way throught he film, a rare achievement.

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noriaga said...

Posted on Sep 08 2007 19:52 wicked.amazing out of this world. cudnt beleive my eyezz!! heavy!! movie of the yr for me!. respect, noreen

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matt said...

Posted on Sep 08 2007 16:37 Amy - why rate a film u've not even seen?! ... weird ...

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amy said...

Posted on Sep 08 2007 08:55 i have never seen it, but it defiantly looks like one of my films! im going this week =]

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movie lover said...

Posted on Sep 05 2007 20:00 a good film went in not expectiong to much and it was great me and a friend saw this coz there no film we onted to see on at the time that suited us so we risked it and a risk that was worth takeing this film is great and a good change

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