A brief review of ‘Breach’ and a Q&A
So last Wednesday night I went to a screening of the new political thriller Breach, I’d already seen it on R1 dvd, but I like to see things on the big screen and there was a Q&A afterwards with the director of the film Billy Ray, and stars Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillipe which was worth it alone.
I recorded the Q&A so you can take a listen using the player below. It’s interesting to hear the guys talk about the film and the real life character that Chris Cooper portrays on film, and at the end they even briefly mention what films they have coming up.. Chris Cooper has ‘The Kingdom’ and Ryan Phillipe mentions a Viking film he’s going to be working on.
The film tells the real life story of Eric O’neil (Ryan Phillipe) an FBI trainee who is apointed to work in the office of Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) a senior FBI agent. O’neil is forced to track Hanssens movements, gain his trust, and as it turned out discover proof that Hanssen was selling U.S secrets to Russia. The biggest security breach in FBI history.
Billy Ray’s last film ‘Shatttered Glass’ was a really interesting film, ultimately made better by good casting decisions in Hayden Christensen (actually acting for a change) and Peter Sarsgaard. The same is true in Breach. Ryan Phillipe i’ve always been slightly indifferent too, and this film didn’t make me change my mind, but Chris Cooper as always pulls the film up to another level. Cooper has a way of adding weight, believability and depth to a character like few other actors can. There’s a scene near the end with Cooper in the lift, uttering the line to Phillipe “pray for me” that for a 6 second shot, almost makes the film.
Billy Ray is obviously a competant director and deals well with characters and actors, but has trouble really making the story as exciting as it could be. Tension is handled deftly but tends to peeter off. The film obviously draws inspiration from 70’s thrillers like ‘All the Presidents Men’, ‘Three Days of the Condor’ and even ‘The Conversation’ to a degree but failed to draw me in like those stories did. I think films like ‘All the Presidents Men’ take a story that is almost ridiculously complicated distills it down and finds a focus to hang events around. Breach tries to do this with the Cooper/Phillipe relationship but it’s never quite enough.
It’s a good film but not a great film. It’s certainly not in the same league as the 70’s political thrillers that inspired it, and while i’d rather probably rather watch ‘All the Presidents Men’ than read about Watergate, the opposite is true with ‘Breach’ I think I need to buy a book to read more about Hanssen’s story that was glossed over too quickly in the course of the film.
Breach is out on general release today (Friday the 31st)
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