WRITER-director Billy Ray exposed a journalist who made up stories in his previous film Shattered Glass. Breach is another true life tale - and one that's even more likely to elicit Victor Meldrew like gasps of "I do not believe it".

The public finally heard about the exploits of FBI special agent Robert Hanssen in 2001 when he was arrested and charged with espionage. It emerged that for 22 of his 25-year career he'd been selling classified documents to Russia during the Cold War and then to the former Soviet Union.

Chris Cooper adds another authority figure to an impressive list in movies like American Beauty, Seabiscuit and Silver City as Hanssen, whose motives for his betrayal are difficult to fathom out. He was a patriot but sold his secrets, he was a churchgoer but tapped into dodgy internet sites.

Ryan Phillippe, after fighting for his country in Eastwood's Second World War drama Flags Of Our Fathers, co-stars as surveillance operative Eric O'Neill, recruited by spy boss Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) to work as an assistant to Hanssen, gain his trust and expose the mole in the midst of the FBI. Unlike thriller The Bourne Ultimatum, Breach uses words and characterisation rather than nail-biting action sequences to grip its audience. That it achieves this is due in no small measure to Cooper's finely detailed account of a man who betrayed his country and Phillippe as the younger agent drawn into his web of deceit.

Stars: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert, Kathleen Quinlan, Gary Cole, Caroline Dhavernas Running time: 110 mins
Rating: Four stars