Eric O'Neill, a low-level surveillance expert with the FBI, believes he is accomplishing his dream of becoming a full-fledged agent, with his unexpected promotion and assignment to clerk for Robert Hanssen, a renowned senior agent with 25 years in the FBI. However, he soon learns the reason for his promotion is to gain Hanssen's trust and find proof that he is a traitor to the country. Determined to draw the suspected double-agent out of deep cover, O'Neill finds himself in a lethal game of spy vs. spy, where nothing is as it seems.
Though never really very versatile, Ryan Philippe delivers quite well in this fact-based drama about one of the most famous cases of espionage to ever happen in the USA. O'Neill is a tech specialist with aspirations to be an agent who is selected by Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) for a very unique task. He is to work with the long established Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) on devising new ways to keep their systems safe from hackers. What we, and they, know is that Hanssen is suspected of being a mole, and a pretty darned substantial one at that. It's going to fall to O'Neill to try and find a way past the formidable defences of his new boss in the hope that they can entrap him. This won't be an easy task as Hanssen is a shrewd man, probably the most shrewd in the Bureau. Obviously this is a top secret mission, so he can't tell wife Juliana (Catherine Dhavernas) anything about what's going on - and that puts predictable strain on their marriage, especially as he begins to make some progress on a mark who likes nothing better than cat and mouse games - even with his own side! The story was huge news so there's not so much jeopardy, nor does Billy Ray really try to manufacture any. It's more a study of characterisations and Philippe and Cooper perform quite strongly on that front with some lively tit-for-tat dialogue and smouldering views on repressed religiosity. It could maybe lose ten minutes, but once it gets going it's quite a well paced thriller worth a watch.
