Dan and I have been watching a lot of espionage-related movies lately. We recently watched the 2007 film Breach — I had seen it before with my best friend, but Dan had never seen it before so we decided to pick it up. I had really enjoyed the movie the first time I watched it, and it was just as good the second time around. It’s based on the real-life story of Robert Hanssen, a former American FBI agent who served as a spy for the Soviet Union against the U.S. for 22 years, who had actually lived in my own Vienna neighborhood, where I grew up in Northern Virginia.
Breach is filmed from the perspective of Eric O’Neill, the upstart FBI operative who had been put to work under Hanssen as a clerk, whose secret assignment was to monitor him at all times. He played a key role in Hanssen’s capture and exposing solid evidence for his conviction. The film was definitely not an action movie along the lines of the typical Hollywood spy movies, but was more of a slow-burning suspense… which I think helped to preserve the accuracy and credibility of the story. It was still suspenseful and dramatic, and there were moments where you’d be really scared that Hanssen would find O’Neill. The actors, especially Chris Cooper who played Robert Hanssen, were really convincing in their portrayals of the characters they played, and their performances were really what solidified the film.
I remember when they caught Robert Hanssen in February of 2001, during our senior year at James Madison High School, the whole area was thrown into shock that such a traitor could have remained hidden among our peaceful community for so many years. One of our teachers had lived on the same street as Hanssen, and she remembered that a young couple had bought the house across from Hanssen in full, months before his capture — it was later revealed that they had been undercover agents posing as a couple and spying on him and collecting evidence. Nottoway Park, one of the primary locations he used for his drop-offs of packages for the Soviets, is really close to my parents’ home where I grew up — my siblings and I played there as children and went on picnics with my parents, I practiced my driving in its parking lots, and my brother would often go there to play frisbee.
At the time of his capture almost ten years ago, I was pretty oblivious to the details of the whole incident; I didn’t realize the heaviness and magnitude of what Hanssen had done and how crucial his capture was. But when I watched the movie the first time and saw the all-too-familiar scenes — him making drop-offs in Nottoway Park, driving down Rock Creek Parkway, and over the Potomac River past the Kennedy Center where I interned one summer — it felt surreal to see all that in a movie, and to realize that all that became a part of history. To think that “the most damaging spy in American history” lived only minutes away from me is unbelievable.
We also just watched Salt the other day, which is not based on a true story, but is quite action-packed and entertaining in that respect. All I have to say is that Angelina Jolie’s still got it! In the role of Evelyn Salt, she returns to doing what she does better than anyone — kicking butt! If only I could be an awesome punch-throwing, feisty CIA agent like her! The chances of that were slim before, and even slimmer now… you don’t see many butt-kicking pregnant ladies out there….