Film Review
Free agents
by Helene Wong
That bastion of the free world, the FBI, gets it in the neck twice this week, but the way it’s depicted in these two films, it seems like two different organisations. Both plots are about when good guys go bad, but only one has a shot at credibility; the other has Bruce Willis.
The credible one, Breach, has Chris Cooper, whose chameleon and ambiguous qualities have earned him both good- and bad-guy roles and thus make him ideal to play Robert Hanssen, a real-life counterintelligence agent who sold secrets to the Soviet Union. He was found guilty of treason in 2001; this film shows how the FBI nabbed him.
The key to the operation is Eric O’Neill (Ryan Philippe), a young operative plucked from the chorus line of surveillance duty and installed as Hanssen’s assistant. Ambitious, he welcomes the elevation; only when he finds out the true nature of what’s expected – spy on and deliver up his boss – as well as the enormity of the latter’s transgressions, does he realise how high the stakes are and how much the nation’s security is at risk.
Heavy stuff, but Philippe, never big on displays of emotion, employs his pokerfaced watchfulness to good effect, keeping hidden the pressure his character is obviously feeling. The tension, however, is palpable. This is not spy v spy in the action sense, but a psychological battle where the line between trust and betrayal is a high-wire act. It’s a riveting, heart-in-mouth thriller.
It’s also a superior thriller because it feels authentic. The reality is that most spy work is boring, painstakingly slow and office-bound. The film’s design emphasises this very ordinariness in its office-grey anonymity and claustrophobic corridors and rooms; the modest, even spartan domesticity of the characters’ homes; the suit-and-tie as opposed to cloak-and-dagger. The blandness not only makes it credible but also allows the focus to be on the characters and how their faces reveal, and conceal, their thinking.
We may never know what motivated Hanssen, and the script only hints at possibilities, never insights. This isn’t an analysis of character, or betrayal, despite director Billy Ray’s apparent interest in it (his Shattered Glass was about journalistic hubris and deception), but that in no way detracts from Cooper’s discomforting and convincing portrayal of the classic lone wolf: grumpy, closed-off, and constantly wary.
Character nuance is neither present nor expected in Die Hard 4.0, however, and there’s something very pleasing about how well it delivers without it. Simply, this fourth outing of the franchise satisfies its mandate to entertain. The title, incidentally, is different from that used in the US – the more patriotic Live Free and Die Hard – but it’s better, since it’s really about If Geeks Ruled the World. This time, the weapon of choice that Willis’s John McClane is up against is fingers flying across keyboards: digital terrorism is the enemy here.
Briefly, a team of hackers takes over the country’s power and transportation infrastructure. (Don’t bother wondering if they could actually do that. You won’t have time.) Mayhem ensues. McClane picks up one of the hackers and together they fight back, the hacker with his fingers, McClane with his fists. Charmingly old-fashioned action clichés such as motorways, elevator shafts, rooftop chases and kung fu moves still rule.
The FBI here is nothing like in Breach. Headless chooks come to mind. Well, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t need McClane. But when poor Cliff Curtis, who seems to be in charge but isn’t really, is forced to bleat, “Why didn’t I know about this?” and is told something risible about pay levels, you know it’s time to stop thinking and just kick back and watch Willis kick ass.
BREACH, directed by Billy Ray.
DIE HARD 4.0, directed by Len Wiseman.
