Friday, February 16, 2007

Breach

Spy movies seem to be all the rage right now. Magnolia Darkness has a nice review in this morning's Times of "Breach", a new film about Robert Hansen, a creepy FBI agent who will spend the rest of his life in federal prison for selling secrets to the Russkies. Starring the always excellent Chris Cooper and the squinty-eyed soon-to-be-ex-husband-of-Reese-Witherspoon Ryan Phillippe, "Breach" sounds like it's worth netflixing. (As our regular readers know, we don't get out to the movies very often.) As a bonus, the review has a few snarky Dargisisms. (As a student of bureaucracy, I'll note that most jokes about bureaucracy aren't really very funny, but her comment that the FBI is like Microsoft, but with worse security, is priceless.)

Incidentally, the movie was directed by Billy Ray, whose best known earlier work was the interesting failure, "Shattered Glass." As a pure movie-watching experience, "Shattered Glass" is difficult to watch because the entire movie rests on Hayden Christensen's small, spindly shoulders. (Is there a worse actor who gets regular work in relatively high-profile movies? It's hard to think of one. Nominees?) However, it pops up on cable occasionally and I can't help watching it, mainly because I sort of lived through the experiences described in the movie. I was a sort-of contemporary of Steve's--I'm a year or two older than he is--in DC and met him a few times at parties. I also knew Hanna Rosin (played by Chloe Sevigny in the movie), who was Steve's big defender until end, and some of the other young editors at TNR at the time. I had just left DC for Indiana when the shit hit the fan (so to speak). If you're interested, Dave Plotz (who is married to Hanna) wrote about the surreal experience of watching the movie in Slate in 2003.

Posted by jwb at 10:00 AM   

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