Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen isn't the most likely choice for a sympathetic portrayal in a Hollywood film. The real-life Hanssen, who is played by Chris Cooper in the new drama Breach, was domineering to his subordinates and resentful of his superiors. He was an ostensibly pious member of the ultra-orthodox Catholic organization Opus Dei, but associated with strippers and engaged in bizarre sexual practices. In Breach, Hanssen makes derogatory remarks about atheists, women and members of the gay community, drives drunk, fires a gun in public and acts in a generally contemptible manner.
On top of all that, Hanssen is also a traitor to his country. He sold government secrets to Russia and the Soviet Union in exchange for cash, while serving the FBI agent in charge of hunting Russian spies in the United States. Hanssen's perfidy cost the government billions of dollars and resulted in the deaths of Russians who had secretly aided the United States.
Breach is about the last months of the internal investigation that resulted in Hanssen's arrest and lifetime imprisonment. But it is also a character study, an examination of how a complicated and contradictory man deals with the endgame resultant from the layers of deception he has created in his life.
While it slowly builds to the inevitable crescendo of Hanssen's arrest at a park in Fairfax County, the film's scenes that set the stage for that confrontation avoid coming off as perfunctory or merely expository.
As the film shows, the case against Hanssen was painstakingly built by a team of over 50 investigators. One of them, Eric O'Neill, was not only not an FBI agent
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