By Brandon Nolta

Ah, the phlegmatic Chris Cooper. Character actors are a dime a dozen in the City of Angels, and it’s a rare thespian who can reliably play so many shades in the moral spectrum; Cooper makes it look old hat. In the first few minutes of BREACH, freshly released unto the DVD masses, Cooper manages to squeeze a lifetime of hard work and frustration into an arched eyebrow, a pursed mouth and a sidelong glance at a parking space. Wait until he actually starts to talk.
    
BREACH is a throwback to an older movie style; despite its modern technology and setting, the storytelling tradition it evokes belongs to a more patient, pre-Bruckheimer and Bay era, where you could have a thriller without blowing crap up every five minutes or gutting someone with an array of tools that crosses the line into Home Depot porn. Based on the story of the hunt to catch the man behind the worst breach in U.S. intelligence history, the movie follows Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe), who’s plucked from tracking duty to work closely with Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), who O’Neill is told is a card-carrying member of the freakin’ pervert nation. As time goes on, O’Neill’s observations of Hanssen and his suspicion that his boss, Agent Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney), isn’t telling him everything lands O’Neill in an operation of a different stripe: Hanssen, he discovers, is a suspected mole, and it’s O’Neill’s job to help flush him out.
    
The movie unfolds like a chess game on film, and while that might not sound like a ringing endorsement, it’s far more engrossing than any 10 normal Hollywood thrillers. Part of the reason for that is that the two main players — Hanssen and O’Neill — can’t see all the pieces, and so what truly emerges is a picture of two intelligent, capable men playing against each other without quite knowing what game is being played. Phillippe, an underrated actor, brings a solid assurance to this role, showing initiative and doubt in equal measure, but it takes all his A-game to stand up to Cooper, who is the maddening, mesmerizing heart of darkness in this story. Devoutly faithful, yet possessing more than a few … well, kinks, patriotic yet willing to sell men and information for bundles of cash, Hanssen is a bundle of demons and brilliance, so capable that it takes a large task force and a massive covert operation to bring him down, and Cooper nails every quirk with aplomb, capturing the neuroses and highly-trained mind behind the man. The supporting cast never falters, but this is a two-man show, and Phillippe and Cooper take every chance to run with it.
    
Like the film itself, Universal’s DVD presentation is solid without being flashy. A passel of deleted and alternate scenes are available on the bonus menu; while it’s clear why the scenes were cut (and if it isn’t, the commentary from writer/director Billy Ray and editor Jeffrey Ford ought to clear up the mystery), the scenes are strong enough that their inclusion wouldn’t have hurt. The movie commentary, which provides numerous details about filmmaking and the real-life operation, is provided by Ray and Eric O’Neill himself, who left the FBI for a law career shortly after Hanssen was caught. If all that wasn’t enough, a couple of featurettes on the making of the film are included, as well as the DATELINE NBC segment on Hanssen that aired in March 2001. Adrenaline junkies who worship at the altar of Michael Bay will have to get their fix a different way, but fans of intelligent, character-driven thrillers will find mucho satisfaction with BREACH.