Eventually, the 2007 thriller
Breach gets pretty darn good, but you gotta wade through a pretty weak first act to get there. But once it actually gets into a groove that writer/director Billy Ray (the guy behind last years better than expected military drama
Thank You For Your Service) seems more comfortable with,
Breach finally becomes something more akin to (though not as wholly successful as) the suspenseful political thrillers of the 1970's it's clearly mimicking. Like that subgenre of American cinema,
Breach is based on a true story of corrupt American politics, specifically the saga of Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), an intellegence officer at the FBI that is being secretly spied on by Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe).
