At the movies
Spy vs. Spy
By PETER RAINER THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

"Breach" is about the taking down of FBI operative Robert Hanssen, the most destructive spy in American history. Arrested in February 2001, he was found guilty of spying for the Russians for 22 of his 25 years of service.

To the filmmakers's credit, we never feel we're watching a docudrama, and this has everything to do with the performance of Chris Cooper as Hanssen. Cooper inhabits a character who is, at heart, a cipher, and yet he gives him human weight.

As Eric O'Neill, the young agent-in- training who brings him down, Ryan Phillippe has in some ways as difficult a role - he has to play opposite the cipher.

Part of the film's vividness is in observing how O'Neill manages to elude the growing suspicions of this human lie detector. The close calls and split-second escapes are hairraising because we realize what is at stake - even though we know in advance how this will all turn out. When O'Neill attempts to restrain Hanssen while, at a different location, Hanssen's car is being searched by the FBI, is especially harrowing. The two men wrangle on the Potomac Parkway, with the Lincoln Memorial in the background.

Without Cooper's performance, "Breach" would have been a good, workmanlike thriller. His presence lifts it to a whole new level. So many movies about spies and moles and double agents leave you with a big gaping hole where its heart ought to be. The psychological insight Cooper brings to his portrait is so rich that it deserves to be called novelistic. Grade: B+