From the imdb entry: "Based on a true story, FBI upstart Eric O'Neill enters into a power game with his boss, Robert Hanssen, an agent who was ultimately convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union."
Great film, which we saw yesterday evening at Basingstoke. Most of the pre-film trailers ('hitman' etc) seem to be crashing cars, large explosions and heavily-muscled dudes firing automatic weapons, one in each hand. This by contrast, is a battle of wits played out in windowless offices and airless corridors.
Hanssen progresses, through the 110 minutes of the film, from misunderstood, technocratic patriot to monumental scumbag. Eric O'Neill has to work all hours, day and night, on the case and has problems with his wife, to whom he is forbidden from explaining anything. No wonder he left the agency once the case was cracked.
As the film ended, the final screens revealed that as we sat there, Robert Hanssen was himself sat in a solitary confinement cell in Florence, Colorado, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
He still is as you read this.
