Breach

It’s hard to believe that a movie that comes off as bland as Breach was directed by the same man that made journalism and Hayden Christensen so thrilling in his 2003 directorial debut, Shattered Glass. Now, I don’t wish to compare two movies, but there is a reason why Shattered Glass was successful where Breach was not. The movie really suffers from a lack of Hollywood tricks. And I have no problem with realistic filmmaking, but this is not a film derived from realism.

Breach begins with Eric O'Neill, a young FBI recruit-wanna-be Agent played by Ryan Phillippe, whose expertise is in computers. O’Neill gets a chance to impress the agency when he is assigned the duty of spying on his new boss, Robert Hanson (played by Chris Cooper) who is well respected, yet a sexual deviant within the Bureau. After a little surveillance of Hanson, O’Neil is convinced the man is innocent, seeing how he prays constantly, doesn’t do anything sinful, and his grandchildren love him! O’Neil is then told that Hanson has been selling secrets to the Soviets for years, and is the biggest trader in US History. Throw in a lot of religious undertone, some "how could he believe that" lies from Phillippe, and some unrequired sex visuals, and you have the blandness of Breach.

The biggest problem with Breach is with its plot. Rather than unfold like a story should, it just appears with no entertainment value. We’re told at the beginning of the film by real footage of John Ashcroft that Robert Hanson is guilty, which gives us nothing to look forward to, thrill wise. And I am aware that the filmmakers may not have intended this to be a thriller, more of an account of a true story. Well, we will leave the accounts to the evening news, the first job of a movie is to entertain, something this film does seldom. In Shattered Glass, a far superior film, director Billy Ray used his filmmaking tricks and storytelling to lead the audience in different directions, not letting them know what came next, or how the story will turn out in the end. The problem with Breach, lies within its screenplay (penned by William Rotko, Adam Mazer and Ray), which howled to let Hitchcock after it to give it some thrills, even if they are refrigerator moments (A phrase coined by Hitchcock as moments in films that make no sense, yet everyone is so intrigued by the film they do not notice until they are at their refrigerator later that night).

But then there is that ethical issue of whether or not one should try to stylize films based on true stories. Well, I’ll give you one good answer: yes you should, because this is a movie and unless we’re dealing with a credible documentary, we the audience should just take it as an entertaining story. If the filmmakers of Breach just wanted to present actual events in an unstylized way, they should have made a documentary. Which may have been more exciting.

Other Films by Billy Ray:
Shattered Glass(2003)

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