Breach (2007), Dir. Billy Ray

Go rent this if you haven't seen it. It's the story of Robert Hanssen, the worst spy in modern American history, a high ranking FBI counterintelligence analyst who was caught in early 2001 after almost two decades of treason. It's one of those thrillers that maintains its intensity despite our knowledge of the ending, and Chris Cooper, playing Hanssen, is just great (even if you can see traces of his roles in both American Beauty and The Bourne Identity).

Then there's the political commentary. Since we're dealing with a true story here, the politics emerges more naturally than in most potboilers. In retrospect, Hanssen looks like a harbinger of the decade: a bitterly resentful and entitled right-wing wackadoo spins paranoid schemes from his drab desk job, one where he has no window (literally) onto the outside world, only a crucifix for the daily prayer that he also imposes upon his subordinates. Hanssen rants about "fag" photographers, women in pants suits, Hillary Clinton, and national security, as if they're all intimately connected. He promotes Opus Dei and marital bliss while gorging on violent porn. And he depicts himself as the ultimate patriot-victim even as he's destroying our capacity to conduct overseas intelligence operations. He's obsessed with money and status, although he needs desperately to believe that he's acting from higher motives, twisted though they may be.

In short, Hanssen might as well be Dick Cheney or George Bush or Karl Rove or Paul Wolfowitz or John Ashcroft (whose face opens the movie). He's our wingnut surveillance culture writ large. And when he goes down, it is not a pretty sight.