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Breach
Universal Pictures


7.2

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 49 votes
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FILM:

Shattered Glass

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence, sexual content and language

Starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole, Dennis Haysbert, Kathleen Quinlan, and Bruce Davison

Inspired by true events, Breach is a dramatic thriller set inside the halls of the FBI -- the gatekeeper of the nation's most sensitive and potentially volatile secrets. Following his success with the electrifying and acclaimed "Shattered Glass," co-writer/director Billy Ray explores more deeply the disillusionment and questionable moral mentorship of a young idealist. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Adam Mazer (also story) William Rotko (also story) Billy Ray
DIRECTED BY:	Billy Ray
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 12, 2007 Theatrical: February 16, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	110 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The acting is superb, particularly from the three principals.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Filled with tension, deception and bravura acting, Breach is a crackling tale of real-life espionage that doubles as a compelling psychological drama.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A compelling and eerily effective little drama.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In this steadily gripping hothouse of a thriller, it's Cooper -- funny, fierce and bug-wild -- who gives us a look into the abyss.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

In every important way, Breach isn't just a solid thriller; it's also an ambitious and engrossing piece of narrative journalism.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

That it's based on a true spying case seems almost incidental. The heart of the picture is the human drama.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Without Cooper's performance, Breach would have been a good, workmanlike thriller. His presence lifts it to a whole new level.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The movie is serious, intelligent, intentionally claustrophobic and awfully somber -- you remember it in black and white, though it was shot (by the masterful Tak Fujimoto) in color. But you'll remember Mr. Cooper's performance for exactly what it is, an uncompromising study in the gradual decay of a soul.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

One of the strengths of Breach, a thriller that manages to excite and unnerve despite our knowing the ending, is how well it captures the utter banality of this man and his world.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

In this film, everything comes down to the acting. Chris Cooper, one of our finest screen actors, gets inside the mysterious traitor. Ryan Phillippe has just the right gung-ho determination tempered with a touch of naivete as O'Neill. Meanwhile, Laura Linney nails the role of a career agent.

Newsweek David Ansen

A wonderfully taut cat-and-mouse thriller.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

This is a spy movie bereft of the genre's usual, casual kicks. It's not interested in cheap thrills or playing gotcha with the audience. (Which isn't to say parts of it aren't exhilarating.)

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Here is one of the best American actors (Chris Cooper) in one of his best parts.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Cooper also pulls off the near-impossible, making us feel dashes of sympathy for this twisted and unscrupulous man.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

This is a quiet, meticulously plotted chamber piece, not the booming, lightning-paced orchestral affair we know as the contemporary action film in the Age of Ludlum.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The procedural aspects of the story are briskly done, and Chris Cooper's portrayal of the traitor Hanssen is a typically Cooperesque marvel.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Though it's being dumped in the wastelands in February, Breach is better than many of the pack of so-called prestige movies that were released at the end of last year.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The main problem with Breach is that the story is told through O'Neill, who's far less compelling, in part because Phillippe doesn't have the chops to draw out his own set of contradictions. By committing himself to O'Neill's perspective, Ray misses the opportunity to uncover more information about Hanssen's relationship with his wife and church, his aberrant sexuality, and his mysterious connection to the Russians.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Like "Shattered Glass," the other picture Billy Ray directed, Breach probes a guilty mind and reveals how he baffled people. We get a Hitchcock-like pleasure from knowing the protagonist is guilty and watching other shocked characters realize his wickedness.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Now Ray has directed his second film, the abysmally titled Breach, and it's a bona fide companion piece, another true-life tale of duplicity gone secretly insane.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Phillippe has the unenviable task of trying to make O'Neill equally interesting, but an eager beaver with some unresolved family issues is no match for a poisoned soul methodically laying the groundwork for his own inevitable fall. The unfortunate imbalance makes long stretches of the film feel dull, but when Cooper is on screen it's mesmerizing.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Ray and his writers found plenty of material to fill Cooper's capable hands. They've turned what must have been a tedious investigation into a sharp cat-and-mouse game between Hanssen and Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe).

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Cooper is the reason to see the film, which was photographed by Tak Fujimoto in the dour tones he brought to a more flagrant realm of evil, and FBI detective work, in "The Silence of the Lambs."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The flaw in the movie is that it can't give a plausible reason WHY this patriotic Catholic family man turned traitor, and the script annoyingly addresses this lack several times by saying, "The why doesn't matter." Actually, it does. We want some reason.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Less ambitious and more narrowly focused than the CIA saga "The Good Shepherd," Breach is a compelling, intelligent drama.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Just as somber as "The Good Shepherd," the most recent domestic spy drama, but more tightly focused, Breach absorbingly zeroes in on how the FBI nailed the most damaging turncoat in American history.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Cooper's performance is outlandishly great, but Phillippe’s knocks Breach down a peg.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Breach is a look at the insecurities and flaws we all carry, it just happens to be embedded in the story of the worst traitor in FBI history.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

These days it's going to take a pretty exceptional political thriller to top our political reality for sheer suspense and treachery, and though director Ray (Shattered Glass) provides a few choice moments of psychological tension, nothing in his film can hope to outpace the anxiety caused by the appearance of former Attorney General John Ashcroft in its opening scene.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

By the end of Breach, we never come to fully understand Hanssen -- who could? -- but Cooper's beguiling performance and his tense cat-and-mouse games with Phillippe help bring an extra layer of entertainment to this otherwise rote thriller.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Breach is competently made but, aside from Cooper's performance, there's nothing here worth getting excited about.

Empire Kim Newman

Cold and cerebral, with simmering suspense rather than outright excitement, this is a feel-the-quality-of-the-acting movie. It can’t answer all sorts of questions, but does take a scary mug shot of a subtle monster.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Hanssen is such an enigma that any attempt to explain him has inherent interest. Breach expends too much energy on a minor functionary, but it is still worth seeing for its fleeting looks into a heart of darkness.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Under better circumstances, Cooper might be said to have stolen the picture outright. But as it is, and compelling as he is, there's just nothing here to steal.

The New Yorker David Denby

The unexciting look and feel of the movie wouldn’t have bothered me if the filmmakers had penetrated Hanssen’s skull a little.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen is now serving a life sentence for his long career as a Russian and Soviet spy, but this rote thriller implies he should have done prison time just for being Catholic. As played by Chris Cooper, Hanssen is a humorless asshole who commits treason because the bureau won't give him an office with a window, and the screenplay scores countless easy points off his religiosity, which masks a weakness for sex tapes and sleazy chat rooms.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 49 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Peter C. gave it a10:
The mistake of reviewers who pan this film is their expecting something before entering the theater: cat-and-mouse action, a bright color palette, a plot that doubles back on itself, someone other than Ryan Phillippe, a need to understand the mystery of Hanssen, no Catholic bashing, a fast paced movie, etc. I hate slow pacing and dopey theatrics and The Good Shepherd takes the cake. This movie is one of a piece in terms of mood and tone. It has tension, but is able to make religiousity compelling. It is a story about being confused about what makes someone a good Catholic and a patriotic American. And you are going to be left with a mystery because this man is so tightly wound, even though there are sufficient clues. He has a mess of a personality, but no awareness of that. Instead, he projects that mess onto everyone else, with airtight logic that is only comprehensible to himself. That is what paranoia is all about. How do I know? I'm a psychiatrist and work in the DC area. If not paranoid, enough persons I have met who can't talk about their work, but you know where they work, ain't the life of the party. The core of this movie is both about a man (played with brilliant restrained tension by Chris Cooper") and about a good and idealistic boy who finds himself betraying those closest to him. Neither one believes he has a choice in the matter but to betray his country or betray those closest to him. This is a top ten film.

Ricardo A. gave it a9:
Oh, god, how much do I love spy movies with no car chase in them. Brilliant movie! More than brilliant Chris Cooper!

Joyce C. gave it a5:
Breach was suppose to be a gripping and heartwarming film like The Shawshank, but on the other hand, Billy Ray captures nobody in the audience from what I saw. Everyone was just cracking their heads, or slowly yawning, and most of the time people kept on looking at their cell phones to see what time it was. I was extremely anxious fro this film to be over with. Since the trailer looked so amazing and definitely a film to go see. I couldn't wait to see it. At first you really enjoy the script and the storyline as it impatiently moves along. And then you read all these wonderful reviews commented how good Chris Cooper did, which he did all right in his easy role. The first time you see it, you must see it in the theatres and that's when you'll say it was a great movie. Then I couldn't wait for it to come out, because its one of those films that at first you think its okay. But then you read all these dazzling reviews with a metascore of 74, then after a couple of weeks, you start agreeing with the critics. That's when you can't wait for it to come out. But when it came out, I gathered all the family members for a movie night to watch Breach. because at that time I thought it was brilliantly breathtaking. After the film starts, your smile turns into a yawn and all those wonderful actors playing in the film just threw their faces in a toilet and flushed it away. It was weak. The best and only part was when Eric didn't know which pocket his thingamabob went in. That was pretty thrilling. But the film just didn't capture me. The movie makes you so anxious for it to end and when it finally does, you'd rate it a high six or a low seven. But after I started reading some reviews again after a week, I thought of it differently. I thought it was a really good movie. The reason why I rated it a 5 is because I thought back of how weak and dull the film was, I just said you know what, I'm gonna give it a 5 and be done with it because when you read the reviews, you think its good, but when you watch it, its really unentertaining. I prayed for something to happen the first time I watched it but what I think was that Billy Ray was loosing time so he just quickly got it over with and arrested the damn boss. Just watch it once and never again.

Tony B. gave it an8:
Far superior to "The Good Shepherd," to which it has been compared, "Breach" is one of 2007's best films. It is extremely well written, acted, directed, edited and photographed. With all due respect to Chris Cooper, who has become one of the critics' darlings, let's not forget the excellent work done here by Laura Linney and Ryan Phillippe. She is as capable as ever, and he is one of our more underrated actors.

Jared C. gave it a6:
A all right drama movie with gripping scenes.

Dave F gave it a10:
Fabulous nail-biter.

Lon C. gave it a10:
So far the best picture I've seen in 2007, thanks to solid performances by the three leads, especially Chris Cooper as FBI operative Robert Hannsen. Excellent writing, direction and cinematography add up to a totally engrossing political thriller, heads above the overly-long, overly-ambitious The Good Shepherd. Bravo to all!

Breach Universal Pictures

Breach
Universal Pictures