Breach Reviews
August 31, 2007
Breach is slow, but never ponderous, and not at all like your average spy thriller. It has less obvious thrills and more depth.
Original Score: 3/5
August 31, 2007
A sombre game of cat-and-mouse. What it lacks in genuine tension it amply compensates in the understated performances of the two leads.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
August 31, 2007
Intriguing and intelligent, Breach may be too understated for its own good.
August 31, 2007
An interestingly told tale: melancholy, thoughtful, and very un-American.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
August 31, 2007
Despite a couple of tense set pieces, the suspense needed to ignite this film is disappointingly lacking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
August 31, 2007
Tense, fascinating, worthwhile.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/6
August 28, 2007
Despite a career-best turn from Chris Cooper, however, Breach is a weirdly muted affair.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
August 3, 2007
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
March 21, 2007
Ultimately, the movie soars because of the inspired casting of Chris Cooper as Hanssen.
February 23, 2007
(Chris Cooper)is the principal reason why this unspectacular, low-key study of the Hanssen national security fiasco is so effective.
February 19, 2007
Cooper is superb, hard as granite, dense as an imploding black hole.
Original Score: B+
February 17, 2007
Ray's careful emphasis on authenticity over thrills and psychology over action is impeded by this narrative's narrow window: there's so much we can't know about what Hanssen did and why.
February 17, 2007
Ray's impression of the real Hanssen remains frighteningly opaque.
Original Score: B
February 17, 2007
When your false spy rings the truest, there's a problem.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/6
February 17, 2007
Breach is competently made but, aside from Cooper's performance, there's nothing here worth getting excited about.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
February 16, 2007
A well-paced, intelligent thriller that's easily the most pleasant surprise of the year so far.
February 16, 2007
An uncompromising study in the gradual decay of a soul.
February 16, 2007
Though you know from the start just how it's going to end, Breach, based on the true story of a treasonous FBI operative, is an edge-of-the-seat thriller.
Original Score: 3/4
February 16, 2007
Breach is a movie tailor-made for the age of intelligence failure.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
February 16, 2007
Subtle, complex, bleakly funny at times, but always utterly enveloping, one of the great studies in profoundly abnormal psychology.