‘Breach' tells of integrity, director says 'Breach' tells of integrity, director says
By Matthew Price
Published: June 22, 2007
Director Billy Ray brought a 1970s aesthetic to his spy thriller "Breach,” now available on DVD. "Breach” is based on the true story of FBI double-agent Robert Hanssen, who sold U.S. secrets to the Soviets and Russians for more than 20 years. Hanssen was caught, in part, by Eric O'Neill, a young FBI operative.
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"What I loved about the '70s movies, which were the movies that I grew up on, was that they had an invisible style,” Ray said. "You don't watch those movies conscious of who directed them. You just get absorbed into the story.”
Ray said that kind of "invisible storytelling” is his goal.
"I don't want someone an hour into this movie to think, ‘Wow, what a well-directed movie.' I just want them absorbed in the story.”
Ray's first directorial job was "Shattered Glass,” starring Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass, the journalist who was found to have fabricated many of his stories, and Chuck Lane, the editor who eventually discovered the ruse.
"For me, ‘Shattered Glass' and ‘Breach' are not about deception; they're both about integrity,” Ray said. "Because in the same way that ‘Shattered Glass' is about Chuck Lane, not Stephen Glass, this movie's about Eric O'Neill, not Robert Hanssen. It's about the people who have to catch the deceivers.”
O'Neill is played by Ryan Phillippe.
Hanssen, as played by Chris Cooper, appears to be a dedicated Catholic family man. Hanssen has been assigned a new position upgrading the FBI's information technology. That's a gambit on the FBI's part, drawing him back to home base so it can keep an eye on him. O'Neill is assigned to be Hanssen's assistant but is asked to spy on Hanssen for proof Hanssen is the mole.
"Part of what attracted me to the material in the first place was this fundamental irony, that you have Hanssen, who is talking nonstop about his love of country, his love of God, his love of family and his devotion to all of these ideas, and of course he's violating all of that, 24/7,” Ray said. "And he's in a room with this kid, who never says anything about any of that but is actually living it. He's the actual embodiment of these ideals. And that contrast seemed very rich to me.”
Ray said Phillippe's portrayal as O'Neill may keep Phillippe from being devalued as an actor in the future.
"I think Ryan is a wildly underrated actor, and that's probably just because he's so handsome,” Ray said. "Guys like that have a tendency to get dismissed. But I don't think that'll happen to him anymore. We threw Ryan in there with some pretty serious racehorses. Between Chris and Laura Linney and Gary Cole, these are real pros, and Ryan could keep up with all of them, and he was really quite good.”
The FBI gave Ray almost unprecedented access to the FBI personnel and buildings for the film. "Breach” was the first film allowed to shoot inside the FBI, Ray said.
"I think they always knew that we weren't trying to tell the story about the 22 years that Robert Hanssen got away with it,” Ray said.
"We were telling the story about the four weeks during which the FBI caught him. And during those four weeks, the FBI acted so decisively and so cleverly that the FBI knew they were going to come off looking pretty good in this movie, and they do.”
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