Breach Ahh… Hollywood. You’re so reliable. You can always be counted on to belittle and ridicule those who find comfort in religion and attempt to live their life on a principle. Good for you! That’s something to be proud of as you sip your chai lattes, read your daily Variety, and laugh at that prick Bill Maher. Your latest salvo, Breach, on the surface pretends to be an examination of the worst betrayal in the history of US intelligence, but it ultimately turns into an unfair indictment of religion and the roles that it plays in people’s lives. Ryan Phillippe (Crash) stars as Eric O’Neill, a young CIA operative-in-training who is given an assignment to essentially spy on another legendary senior agent, Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper, Adaptation). Let’s stop right there and examine why my last sentence demonstrates a fatal flaw with the film. You see the part where I wrote, “Ryan Phillippe stars…”? That’s right – vacuous Ryan Phillippe is being asked to carry a movie. Mistake number one right there, Hollywood. Moving on… O’Neill is given a job as a clerk for Hanssen, who the agency has chosen to keep closer tabs on by moving him from his post as a counterintelligence agent in Russia to a nothing job as the head of Information Assurance back in the States. Eventually, O’Neill is informed of Hanssen’s duplicity, which is when the film rapidly begins to spiral downhill. Once Hanssen’s villainy is exposed, any semblance of layering that was evident in Cooper’s portrayal goes right out the window. This lack of character development is unfortunately evident throughout the entire film as there are no real character arcs, which any half-decent writer includes on instinct in his screenplay. For example, we see O’Neill’s wife for one scene early on in the film as she encourages him to follow his dream of becoming a full-fledged agent yet - without any warning at all - two scenes later she’s screaming at him about how his job is destroying their marriage. This ineptitude should not come as a complete shock as writer/director Billy Ray is responsible for the following cinematic, ahem, achievements: Flightplan; Color Of Night; Volcano; Hart’s War. A veritable AFI classics list, that. Ray puts both O’Neill and Hanssen into untenable situations that call for nuance and subtlety, neither of which Phillippe or Cooper seem capable or willing to play. I’d expect this much from Phillippe – he’s as never shown anything even remotely resembling range and he’s at times accurately portrayed in Breach as a fuckup, but Cooper should know better. Maybe it’s a case of a guy who’s better served as a character actor staying within his niche, but Cooper is exposed as an embarrassment as he portrays Hanssen as uber-religious, meaning that he must of course (by good old Hollywood standards) be portrayed as a sexist bigot, spouting Bible verses at the drop of a hat while at the same time using sex tapes of himself and his wife as collateral for his traitorous dealings. Ray also uses numerous scenes where Hanssen and his wife not-so-subtly bully O’Neill and his wife with their beliefs. Yeah, that happens all… the… time. Let’s paint all Christians with the same broad brush. Genius. That’s an accurate portrayal of reality. Look, I was unfortunately unable to turn off my brain while watching this movie. Maybe if I had been, I wouldn’t have been as patently offended as I was but since that was the case… actually, scratch that. Even if I hadn’t been offended, this movie still would have been laughable due to its ridiculous screenplay and abysmal acting. Being offended by it is just rancid icing on the stale, moldy cake that is Breach.
Dirty Rating: 45/100
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