message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

            
Breach  Rated PG-13
Directed by Billy Ray.  Starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe


Photos © Universal Pictures
Eric O’Neill (Phillippe) was a young agent in training with the FBI who was given an opportunity in 2001 to gather information on Robert Hanssen (Cooper), an FBI agent suspected of sexual deviancy.  It is arranged for O’Neill to join Hanssen’s staff as an executive assistant and, hopefully, to pay attention and come up with some incriminating evidence.  As O’Neill gets to work, he begins to admire the older agent, who seems to be the epitome of high moral character and hard-edged common sense.  It’s only when O’Neill learns that Hanssen is a known double agent, working for the Russian KGB and a major security leak that he begins to notice more sinister goings-on.  Breach is based on an actual investigation and only covers about two months of events, but it is a strong morality play about the ways in which serious evil can hide beneath the banality of daily office work, and how even religious faith can be twisted to give the illusion of piety.  Even the devil knew his scripture.  I appreciated how this low-key cat and mouse game was played out, and the film’s honesty about how a deceptive lifestyle of an undercover agent can do real damage to a healthy family life.  We never really learn why Hanssen did what he did, and it is suggested that perhaps he didn’t quite know either. As Eric O’Neill comes to terms with the case, however, he learns and grows from the experience, leading to one of the more satisfactory conclusions of any “based on a true story” films of recent years.    

Pitchfork Rating: Four halos. (A morality play with something to say about the deception of sin and the value of truth.)  Three pitchforks. (Nothing really graphic on screen, but a lot of real evil under the surface; implied scenes of pornography.)

 

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