Breach has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a suspenseful action cerebreal FBI crime drama and covers the takedown of the largest spy leak in American History ("Do you have any idea what it's like to be in charge of a group of agents, all gathered together in a room looking for a spy, and they can never quite put their finger on it because it's you they are looking for?"). I can actually watch it again and again and do psycheanalysis of various behaviors and patterns that they managed to capture in the film for this kind of work.
One of my dream careers was to work for the CIA or FBI. However, it's best to get started early in life on that career with a college degree as most have a cutoff age of about 30. That and I'd already worked for the feds in the military and found the work kind of stressful rather than straight up and I don't know if I could keep up with it the way they had to ("I'm telling so many lies I can't keep them straight anymore!") in the movie.
At any rate, the movie isn't 100% a historical recreation but "based on a true story" only because as a movie, the way the whole thing started wouldn't have made as interesting a flick. In the movie, the agent assigned to uncover Agent Hanson (who's now serving life in a supermax with one hour out of solitary a day and gets to see his family once a year) didn't know the full details of the mission, in real life he knew exactly what he was going after. Other than that, the movie was pretty spot-on. Not only that, Agent Hanson's leaks to the Soviets and other countries did more damage than all the spy leaks in American history combined. Hanson was also one of the premier agents in intelligence for the U.S.....and he was a traitor.
Working with deviants right now, the psychology of the spy world is pretty fascinating to me. The movie is suspenseful with a pretty intense shootout while trying to still keep cover and tell lies while being shot at in order to complete the mission. It's very well done. You would definitely have to be trained and on top of your game to keep up with all this so fast and hold it together.
If you get the DVD you can see the documentaries on the case, the news reports, the interviews with the agents who were in this, the agents who worked with Agent Hanson and a breakdown of the psychology and intelligence that was really at play in all this. This is one worth owning (for me). I strongly recommend it. However, the movie is somewhat "dark" in that it really does capture the stress on families and loved ones who can end up being pawns being played in the middle of a game while you try to keep your head above water to finish a mission.
I'd give this one an A+. It's one of my favorites just for how skillfully it was put together, the story line, the suspense as well as the realistic depcitions of the stress of doing an operation where you're covert.
