Movie Review (Breach)

Last night I headed over to the dollar movie to see Breach. I was familiar with the story and wanted to see how Hollywood adapted something that was in the press only a few years ago.

Overall, the movie was good, yet slow paced. A young FBI intern trying to become an agent is assigned as a clerk to Agent Robert Hanssen. Agent Hanssen was, by then, well know for his reputation as a patriot and fantastic agent. When Hollywood tried to show how brilliant Agent Hanssen was I believe they fell a little flat in the scenes that should have impressed you with agent Hanssen's ability to read people and the like. It was definitely the screenplay or the direction that caused this to fall flat as the actors certainly delivered in their respective roles. I also didn't feel the tension building appropriately as the scenes progressed, but this is perhaps because I knew how the story ended. The only other irritating thing was a scene with Eric O'Neil (Ryan Phillippe) and his wife Julianna (Caroline Dhavernas) where she asks him to betray his mission because she wants to know why he is gone all the time. Having spent a bit of time working in environments which require discretion I can say that when your wife says "Don't you trust me enough to tell me?" The answer is "No." Even better she followed that sentence with "Do you think you would be betraying your country by telling me?" The answer is "Yes." This is simple and should not be taken as a matter of trust or personal preference, you simply don't share these types of things with people who don't need to know regardless of their trustworthiness or good intentions.
This movie is decent but should only be seen at the dollar flick, or a rental. I would say the main detractor from making this true story absolutely fantastic would be the pace of the film.
Let me throw a quick shout out to one of my favorite guys Gary Cole who was in the movie but will always be Bill Lumbergh from Office Space to me.