- Chris Cooper was excellent, as always. Chris Cooper joins that list of people who can improve any film just by being in it (Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, et al). I’m confused as to why such a devoutly pious Catholic who clearly has a thing for ritual and rules would be so against FBI bureaucracy and the types of administrative hurdles you have to jump over just to get a new computer or something else equally benign. I mean, no one likes going through all sorts of red tape, but you’d think he’d be the type of guy to at least understand and appreciate the reasoning behind it if he doesn’t actually like it.
- Ryan Phillippe’s character is also supposed to be incredibly Catholic, having gone to Jesuit school. How can you tell Phillippe himself is not Catholic or even any other denomination of non-orthodox Christian? He crosses himself completely incorrectly. He goes with Chris Cooper’s character to church one day and while he’s clearly knowledgeable enough to dab his fingers in holy water before crossing himself, he then proceeds to first touch his forehead and then both shoulders before touching his chest. Er, WTF? Not even in eastern orthodox is this the proper way to cross yourself. Very revealing error and one I’m surprised they didn’t catch, because surely there was at least one other person on set who did know how to do this properly? Very weird.
- Usually it’s really easy to tell when a movie is shot in Toronto and I wouldn’t have known it was shot there if one of those random Canadian actors hadn’t shown up to play a photographer in a scene not lasting more than two minutes. There’s always this pool of Canadian actors that populates the sidelines of American films shot here, but with the exception of that one guy they didn’t seem to use anyone else that you’d normally recognize from Canadian commercials or TV.
- Laura Linney’s line about how the FBI has consumed her life so much that she doesn’t even have a cat was priceless.
- Er, why was Hanssen sending porn of himself and his wife to his contacts in Germany?
- I liked how Hanssen said that godlessness was the undoing of the Soviet empire, but his own piety was such a huge part of his own downfall.
- For a guy as paranoid as Hanssen, I’m confused as to why it never occurred to him that his entire office might be bugged.
- The sign on their shared office read something like “Assistant to the Assistant Director of Something Or Other” and I kind of wanted Dwight K. Schrute to be sitting at Ryan Phillippe’s desk instead.
- I still like The Good Shepherd better as a tale of espionage and spies from the inside of an intelligence agency. I mean, completely different stories, of course, but despite the fact that Hanssen is continually described as the biggest spy in American history and that the damages he has done to the American government and its allies is still incalculable (etc.), you don’t get enough of a sense of how problematic this is; The Good Shepherd dealt with that a lot better, I thought.
- Hanssen’s Catherine Zeta-Jones obsession was hysterical.
Breach
Hooray for espionage!
IMDB Plot Synopsis Based on the true story, FBI upstart Eric O'Neill enters into a power game with his boss, Robert Hanssen, an agent who was ultimately convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union.