Set in a fantasy vision of the FBI’s corridors of power, writer/director Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”) generates a hollow spy drama based on the true story of the capture of the department’s most detrimental traitor.
Ryan Phillippe plays Eric O’Neill, an aspiring CIA agent assigned to assist and spy on FBI career agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) for acts of sexual deviancy. Laura Linney gives a comically false performance as O’Neill’s condescending superior Kate Burroughs.
Linney’s character protracts revealing the actual reason for O’Neill’s mission until after he falls under Hanssen’s thinly veiled spell of repressed homosexuality.
Awkward digs at the Catholic Church, and only one suspenseful scene add up to an unsatisfying spy thriller about a FBI insurgent who sold state secrets to the Russians for 22 years.
Rated PG-13. 110 mins.
