In 2001, ‘Spycatcher’ Eric O’Neill, an undercover surveillance specialist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped bring down Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI agent. It was big news. Hanssen, who at one point had headed up the taskforce to find the mole within the organisation, had been selling secrets to the Soviets for 15 years. O’Neill, meanwhile, an ambitious young upstart, was only 27. Hanssen, a devout Catholic and member of Opus Dei – he gets a cameo mention in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – has already inspired Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, a made-for-TV movie starring William Hurt. Breach, however, is an infinitely classier affair.
Chris Cooper, one of the finest actors around, has rarely been better. His Hanssen can be creepy, asking his assistant to close the door so he can watch Catherine Zeta Jones movies in, erm, peace. The ferocity of his religious devotion is equally troubling. The Soviets were better than us, he opines, but they did not have God on their side. He takes a shine to O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) in his own hardened way, primarily because the young operative is another Catholic.
But Cooper finds an unlikely charisma and warmth in Hanssen’s unsympathetic cause. Long after he has insisted that his apprentice start accompanying him to Mass, making dissatisfied noises about O’Neill’s East European wife along the way, the younger operative is, momentarily, sufficiently charmed to request reassignment.
Director Billy Ray’s career has been a chequered affair (Volcano, Shattered Glass, Flightplan) but he hits paydirt with Breach’s seductively solemn tone. This may be a thrilling spy movie but it’s the anti-Bourne, a cold cerebral manhunt that slowly and slyly builds to near unbearable tension. Come next spring, expect Oscars and lots of them.