You know, when the DATELINE special on the film's subject is more informative, more exciting, and rather more intriging than the film itself, thats when you've fouled up.
Director Billy Ray can't decide which character is worth investigating more in the dramatic sense: Chris Cooper as the traitor FBI Agent or Ryan Phillipe the rookie agent trying to entrap him.
Yet if BREACH fails, its not that Ray fails totally or is incompetent in the Michael Bay style. There is some things in BREACH that I liked, from a key scene where both characters do share the bond of living a life on the glass house of lies, to that of the ending, which reminds me of Alan Parker's elevator ride down to hell in ANGEL HEART.
In a way, BREACH fails like Danny Devito's HOFFA did. How can such fascinating true-life stories be shot as absolutely mundane stiff cinema tales? Though unlike DeVito, Billy Ray might have a future if he can get his act together.
