Breach is a pretty damn entertaining cat and mouse spy thriller–the kind where one is never quite sure who’s the cat and who’s the mouse. Director Billy Ray tells us exactly what’s going to happen in the first 30 seconds (well, John Ashcroft does) and for the next 110 minutes, you’re on the edge of your seat trying to figure out what actually is going to happen. That alone seems worth celebrating. Oh, I don’t know, it’s probably not as good as all that, but we are in the February doldrums (the flaming Nic Cage pic made $15 million on Friday!), and Breach is a smart, unpretentiously ambitious genre flick that works on a variety of levels and is acted to the hilt by Laura Linney, Gary Cole, Ryan Phillipe and, in perhaps his strongest performance in an already stellar career, Chris Cooper. It’s also one of the most virulent pieces of anti-Catholic propaganda I’ve seen on the big screen in a long time. Continue reading Breach