Breach

Breach (Billy Ray, 2007) - A

Details, details, details -- Ray gives away the plot with the very first shot (real news footage of AG Ashcroft announcing Hanssen's arrest for selling secrets to the Russians), and what's left is the interactions, the psychological pas de deux, the cat-and-mouse games. Stunning how thrilling all of this is despite taking place in an office and consisting largely of people walking around in suits; it's because it's so carefully observed, full of wonderfully unnecessary little bits, like the way Chris Cooper's Hanssen walks down the hallway, constantly ramming the bewildered Ryan Philippe into walls without noticing, or the downright predatory way Hanssen tells the latter to "pray more." Loved the obsessing over minutia (did he put the PDA back in the right briefcase pocket?), and the notion of a global conflict playing out on an administrative scale -- surely it actually happens this way. September 11th subtext is potent, too: the film posits Hanssen's ego as the source of all the trouble, and the notion of men's egoes fucking up international affairs seems vaguely familiar for some reason.