Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Breach

Written at the time of the film's release...

  Breach (Billy Ray, 2007) You look at Billy Ray's CV and you gotta wonder: this guy wrote Color of NightLegalese, Hart's War and Volcano, and he's still working?* 

Yeah, well, he's also directed..with a very clean, unfussy style..the wonderful Shattered Glass (which should be remembered for demonstrating just how GOOD an actor Hayden Christensen is) And he brings that same no-nonsense approach to Breach, the filmed account of the investigation and 2001 arrest of FBI analyst Robert Hanssen who had been selling secrets to the "Bolsheviks" right under the noses and within the confines of the FBI. Like Shattered..., Breach is concerned with the "Who" and "Why," as much as the "How," and Chris Cooper makes the contradictory/unreadable Hanssen a fine screen creep who would freak any employee, much less one recruited to spy and take notes

If Cooper plays a prominent spook, Phillipe has the unglamorous role of the kid who has to do the perversely dirty deed of turning in his boss, appear on the edge of paranoia without being too obvious about it, and walk the moral razor of doing the right thing and being a cheese-eater. Laura Linney's on hand, too, playing one of her few hard-ass roles. It's competent, involving, and scary to know that some semblance of this actually happened

And it has a gut-punching ending that's earned.

* Oh, he's still working, alright and doing quite well for himself, adapting and directing a version of Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, developing the original Hunger Games script, as well as Captain Phillips, the weird unique Overlord, contributing to the soufflé that was Terminator: Dark Fate, and taking sole credit on Richard Jewell.

No comments:

Post a Comment