Robert Hanssen is a high level FBI computer specialist. He has been an agent for 25 years and will soon take mandatory retirement at 57. For years he has tried to make everybody in the agency aware of the possibility of high level moles. As it turns out he is the mole. In a high tech surveillance with the help of another agent posing as Hanssen's aid, the FBI is able to take him down in 2001. Hanssen had been selling secrets to the Soviets/Russians for more than twenty years. By their own estimation, Hanssen was probably the worst case of espionage in United States history. He not only passed thousands of pages of sensitive and top secret information, but he had passed information that led to the deaths of at least three undercover agents and compromised the identities of dozens of others. This was a true story and was well documented. Both Chris Cooper who played the part of Hanssen, and Ryan Philippe, who played Eric o'Neil, Hanssen's assistant turn in excellent performances in this film.Read full review
This film by Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) tells this remarkable story of how Hanssen was eventually exposed and how the F.B.I. worked over the final two months of his employment at the agency to try and infiltrate his circle and make a case using all their available resources at the highest level of the bureau. On February 20, 2001, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested by an agency task force and charged with selling the highest and most classified of the government's secrets to the Soviet Union. His case would later identify him as the biggest spy in American history who's sharing of sensitive documents and information lead to the death of at least three operatives while exposing some of the nation's highest confidential secrets and operations. Chris Cooper (Adaptation) plays Hanssen. He is a church going family man that at first hardly mirrors the monster that the agency is determined to expose. Ryan Phillippe (Crash) plays Eric O'Neill, an agent wannabe that is assigned to work as Henssen's clerk in an attempt to follow, document & spy on his move in an attempt to help the F.B.I. build their case. Their relationship for two months will lead to the downfall of Hanssen's operations and would leave a black mark on the government agencies in a year that presented its own problems by 9/11. The film is less concerned with big action scenes than with examining the relationship between these 2 very different men set in unwitting opposition to one another. Hanssen himself was a mass of immense hypocrisies & contradictions. As a devout Catholic, he attends Mass religiously, recites the rosary everyday, and looks with disdain upon homosexuals, women who wear pants & anybody seemingly to the left politically of extreme conservatism. Yet, despite his outward display of moral rectitude, Hanssen secretly distributes porn videos of his wife (she is unaware of their existence) and betrays his country by turning over classified information to the enemy. O'Neill finds himself simultaneously drawn to & repulsed by the man, who manages to be both prig and libertine at one and the same time. O'Neill knows that what Hanssen is doing is terribly wrong, yet he can't help falling under the spell of a man he knows that, under other circumstances, might well come to value as a friend & a mentor. In July of the same year, Hanssen was tried and convicted for 15 counts of espionage. Followers of the Robert Hanssen case believe that Hanssen's primary motive was to show his own importance (as a information security planner) by revealing holes in the system that he would have plugged. I wish this film would have worked with that a bit, because this notion of helping the system by hurting is system is both what the story could have been about and the means used to tell the story. A news documentary which ran on Dateline on 3/5/2001 outlined the way Robert Hanssen communicated his information to re-establish new protocol to pass information over 6000 pages of documents/data that was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Great roles were delivered as well by Laura Linney, Gary Cole, Dennis Haysbert, Kathleen Quinlan, & Tom Barnett to name a few. Interesting trivia: In the opening, code quickly flashes & is reduced to the movie title. The scrolling code is a Linux procedure that mounts (connects to) networked data sources such as Unix, Windows and Novell file systems. The real Hanssen commonly used a quote about purple pissin' japanese which led to his capture.Read full review
you ever wonder why Hollywood over looks a great performance? this is it! Chis Cooper as Spy who no one could catch. Cooper is perfect as the controlling creepy religious spy Hanson. WE know he is selling secrets we just cannot figure out how to catch him he is far too good at this. Religious to the point of attending church on a DAILY basis and have icons in his office. this only adds to the weirdness of the character and Cooper makes your skin crawl as the man who video tapes his wife and him self having sex and shares his film with other men but is feels a daily need to "cleans his soul" by attending church daily. After watching this more than once we see it is not about the money it about revenge, power and control. very good~ one of the better spy movies~ if you found this review helpful please remember to vote~Read full review
I didnt realize this movie was based on facts / actual events until after I watched it. I learned that this movie was based on the book "spy" by David Wise which I purchased soon after. For the most part the movie is based on actual facts that took place on the take down of FBI agent Robert Hanssen. Many of the details were portrayed as they happened and it also includes special features on it. If you are an individual that is interested in the workings of the FBI counter intelligence and true life espionage you will certainly love this movie.
Great Movie, been a while since we watched a good movie but this one was great.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
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