In the sedate spy story “Breach,” ambitious FBI rookie Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe) is assigned by superior Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) to serve as the clerk of older agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) and report on his activities.

Ostensibly this is because Hanssen is “a sexual deviant” and the FBI fears his personal life could embarrass the Bureau.

O’Neill grows to respect his new superior, who seems like a good Catholic family man, only to discover Hanssen’s strange sexual tastes were not the real reason he got this assignment.

Hanssen has been spying for the Soviets (and later the Russians) since the mid-1980s, and they need non-classified evidence to bring him down.

Thus begins an unequal cat-and-mouse game between the green O’Neill and the cunning, dangerous Hanssen.

Chris Cooper does an excellent job portraying the abrasive, eerily clever Hanssen.

Hanssen comes across as a realistically creepy hypocrite (haranguing O’Neill’s wife Juliana about Opus Dei while mailing porn tapes starring him and his unwitting wife to friends) and gets the lion’s share of the good lines.

Although somewhat overshadowed by Cooper, Philippe manages O’Neill’s crises of conscience well.

Unfortunately, the movie was far slower and less suspenseful than suggested by the previews. There were some suspenseful parts, such as a scene where O’Neill races against time to download the contents of Hanssen’s PDA and a later scene where the suspicious, somewhat-drunk and armed Hanssen drags O’Neill to a nearby park, but there could have been more.

A scene where the stressed O’Neill seeks the advice of his father (played by Bruce Davison) seems abrupt, even though it does play a major role in the plot.

The subplot about O’Neill’s mother having Parkinson’s disease is underused.

Overall, “Breach” is a decent spy movie but could have been much better.