HOW ONE MAN BETRAYED THE SECURITY OF A NATION.
Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe), a young FBI agent-in-waiting, is assigned to clerk for veteran agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), but his real task is to spy on him. The Shattered Glass (2003) director took on another story ripped from the headlines, this one detailing the hard work behind the arrest of Hanssen, the government operative who turned out to have been spying for the Russians for decades. The movie is tense, but feels a little too much like an average spy thriller; we don’t really get the feeling that this is real life. Cooper stands out as the cold, hypocritical and eventually paranoid traitor.
2007-U.S. 110 min. Color. Directed by Billy Ray. Cast: Chris Cooper (Robert Hanssen), Ryan Phillippe (Eric O’Neill), Laura Linney (Kate Burroughs), Dennis Haysbert, Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole… Kathleen Quinlan.
Trivia: The story about Hanssen was also told in the miniseries Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (2002).
