Breach is an espionage story based on the real-life treason case of American FBI agent Robert Hanssen.

Hanssen sold state secrets to the Soviet Union for 20 years and will spend the rest of his life in prison, where at least he may be spared seeing how boring his life looks on the big screen.

The cast of Breach is impressive. Hanssen is played by Chris Cooper.

Both Laura Linney and Dennis Haysbert turn up as FBI honchos.

The actor least likely to succeed in this mix is Ryan Phillippe, who portrays agent trainee Eric O'Neill.

O'Neill is the junior spy responsible for bringing Hanssen down, which puts him at the centre of the narrative.

That's one of the reasons Breach doesn't work very well.

O'Neill is an ambitious agent wannabe sent to work with Hanssen.

He believes he's investigating a potential sex scandal within the agency, because Hanssen is a devout Roman Catholic and also a perv who makes porno tapes of his own wife.

(Spoiler alert: On the bad Catholic front, there are no self-flagellating Albino monks in this movie.)

The sex stuff, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, as O'Neill discovers about an hour after the audience has already figured it out. One of the problems with Phillippe's portrayal is that he makes FBI personnel look as if none of them will be Jeopardy! candidates in this lifetime. Then again, Hanssen was selling secrets for 22 years before the FBI could catch him, so maybe Phillippe's performance is spot on.

Breach, not unlike The Good Shepherd, is a flat film. All the action plays out in the same grey fashion, with few emotional ups or downs, little tension and no real surprises. The director, Billy Ray, often puts the camera right in his actors' faces, but the close-ups do not add anything to the proceedings.

The Hanssen case is supposed to be the worst breach in the history of U.S. intelligence, so it's interesting how little one cares about the movie version. Of course, that may be simply a reflection of the current general opinion of the FBI and how useful it actually is in the general scheme of things.

Anyone at arm's length from the situation -- i.e., not an American -- can only be embarrassed by how seriously everyone takes himself in this tale.

In the end, real-life spycatcher Eric O'Neill quit the FBI and went to law school.

That's telling.

(This film is rated PG)
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