Movie Review: Breach

February is one of the worst months to find a movie in theaters worth watching. This time of year they’re usually full of boring Oscar contenders and other movies the studios don’t have much faith in. Fortunately for movie goers someone decided to release a thrilling spy movie that will probably go down as one of the best movies of 2007. Breach is based on the true story of FBI agent Robert Hansen (Chris Cooper) who spied for the Russians and was considered responsible for the worst security breaches in U.S. History. Eric O’Neil (Ryan Phillippe) is new to the bureau and is hoping to make Agent. He’s assigned to be an assistant to Hansen and reports to a senior agent about every movement Hansen makes.

Even though we learn in the first minute of the film what Hansen did and that he eventually gets caught, Breach is still a thrilling movie. The excitement doesn’t come from car chases or explosions but from the intense physiological drama that is played out between Hansen and O’Neil. Despite his best attempts to earn Hansen’s trust, O’Neil can’t figure his boss out and must continually remember what lies he’s told to Hansen.

Hansen, who loves to be in control, thinks the FBI or some government agency is on to him but can’t be sure. He does his best to keep his assistant off balance by doing things like showing up at O’Neil’s house unexpectedly for dinner and trying to convert O’Neil’s Protestant wife to Catholicism. The tension mounts because we never know just how much Hansen trusts O’Neil or how aware he is of the ongoing investigation.

Phillippe does a wonderful job of portraying someone who is in way over his head. You can’t help but feel for him as the burden of staying one step a head of Hansen spills over into his marriage and strains his relationship with his wife (Caroline Dhavernas).

But it’s Cooper’s acting that is top-notch. He does an excellent job of making his character believable and someone we actually care about. Even though we’re glad Hansen is caught at the end of the film the audience can’t help but feel sorry for him when the consequences of his actions finally catch up with him.

Some views may be frustrated at the ending of the film as it offers no clear-cut explanation for Hansen’s actions. However, the real life Hansen has yet to give any reason for spying and this forces director Billy Ray to hint at many plausible, character-based motivations as to why Hansen started working for the bad guys.

Breach is a movie that goes by quickly. It’s a must see for those who enjoy strong character-based movies and those looking for some needed pre-summer blockbuster entertainment.

Abel’s Rating: A

Lessons from Anna Nicole and Britney

Americans have long been fascinated with successful individuals. Before movies and Hollywood came into existence, Americans gladly devoured gossip about the lives of celebrities, the rich, and the famous. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that the recent death of Anna Nicole Smith and bizarre behavior of Britney Spears have made the headlines of The Drudge Report and have been the subject of countless stories from more “serious” news organizations like CNN, ABC News, and Fox News.

Though at the amount of news time dedicated to Spears and Smith has many rolling their eyes, I don’t think the coverage of them is necessarily a bad thing.

News stories of Spears and Smith are popular is because they contain life lessons that are easy to understand. The lives of these two women illustrate the importance of making good decisions and that money and success does not insulate one from misfortune or the consequences of one’s actions.

Smith’s rags-to-riches tale reads like Shakespearean tragedy. Smith dropped out of high school and married at 17. Her climb to the top began after she posed for Playboy. She used that exposure to launch a successful modeling career and a brief stint as a widely-panned actress. Smith regained the limelight when she married billionaire J. Howard Marshall though she denied it was for his money. After the billionaire’s death and a bitter and lengthy court fight – one that has yet to be resolved – ensued over his inheritance.

In November 2006 Smith gave birth to a daughter only to have her 20-year-old son from her first marriage die in her hospital room three days later from an apparent drug overdose. Then, unexpectedly, Smith passed away three months later at a casino hotel room at the age of 39. The cause of death is still undetermined.

Smith’s story illustrates that beauty, money, and fame are no guarantee of happiness and good fortune.  Despite worldly success she never could keep her passions in check and now a string of men, eager to share in Smith’s wealth, claim to be her daughter’s father. Smith’s untimely death reminds us of our own morality and the importance of living our life to its fullest potential. For the men who admired her buxom body, the lesson is that there’s more to consider in a woman than how she’s packaged.

Unlike Smith, Spears rose to fame and fortune after years of hard work in the entertainment industry. Her effort finally paid off when her hit single “…Baby One More Time” became an international success. Spears released more albums and sales and a Grammy awards followed and she became one of the most successful female artists in American music history. She used her fame to nab several lucrative endorsement deals, a movie, and a reality television show.

Despite her success, Spears seems unable to make wise choices. Her poor decisions have lead to the bottoming out of her career and people questioning her maturity. Despite being the mother of two young children, she maintained a late night partying and alcohol fueled lifestyle and has been in and out of rehab (she’s back in at press time). Most recently she was seen getting tattoos and shaving all the hair from her head.

Overnight her poor decisions have propelled her from a pop music sensation to the butt of jokes on late night TV. Her recent actions may have doomed her music career and quite possibly custody of her two young children.

Parents often complain when their daughters look to people like Spears as role models. But there aren’t many young girls who want to be like her now. Her recent tattooing and head shaving incident have left many aghast and few wanting to imitate the pop princess. When her face is splashed across computer and television screens across the world, it’s a great moment for parents to use Spears recent actions and fall from grace as a teaching tool.

Though the media is sometimes excessive in its coverage of Smith and Spears (the story about the fight of Smith’s body, for example, is getting moldy) that doesn’t mean there are lessons to be learned from pop culture icons. If anything it’s that we’re not immune from the consequences of our actions.

That lesson is one more “serious” news stories fail to portray.

*** 

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This essay was originally published on FreeCapitalist.com. You can read all of Abel's FreeCapitalist essays here.

Hey Jon! I Was Right

Occasionally Jon and I have friendly arguments over how many events and plot twists the writers of LOST plan out seasons in advance and how many the just make up as they go along. I’ve always been of the opinion that a lot of the story line has been planned from the beginning of the show. Jon is more of the opinion that the writers are tying some things together as they go along.

Well the latest post over on a LOST Easter Egg site contains some quotes from the creative minds behind the show that indicates some things were planned out from the beginning.

Q: What is the meaning or significance of the two skeletons that Jack and Kate found in the cave of season 1?

CUSE: The answer to that question goes to the nature of the timeline of the island. We don't want to say too much about it, but there are a couple Easter eggs embedded in [the Feb. 7 episode], one of which is an anagram that actually sheds some light on the skeletons and hints at a larger mythological mystery that will start to unfold later in the season.

LINDELOF: There were certain things we knew from the very beginning. Independent of ever knowing when the end was going to be, we knew what it was going to be, and we wanted to start setting it up as early as season 1, or else people would think that we were making it up as we were going along. So the skeletons are the living — or, I guess, slowly decomposing — proof of that. When all is said and done, people are going to point to the skeletons and say, ''That is proof that from the very beginning, they always knew that they were going to do this.'

– Source Entertainment Weekly

Now there is all kinds of speculation as to who these two skeletons are. Jack and Juliet? Sawyer and Kate? Desmond and Penelope?

I’m just glad the writers are thinking about some things in advance. This usually means a stronger, more coherent story line as the show progresses.

Also, Jon has put together an interesting theory on why people can't leave the island. You can read it here.

The Children of Men by P.D. James

As a general rule, books are better than the movies they’re based on. Because books don’t have budget or time constraints, it’s often hard for screenplay writers to get all the scenes, ideas, and characters from a book to the big screen. Though I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books, I hear fans are usually disappointed with the movies because so much was left out. On the other hand most people were happy with the way The Lord of the Rings movies turned out. There have been a handful of times where I liked the movie more than the book. K-Pax was an awful, uninspiring book but a decent movie. Contact was a great movie but a very long and dull book.

I bring this up because I just finished reading The Children of Men and find myself in unchartered territory. I really liked the movie (read my review here) and the book. The problem is the book and movie are VERY different from each other. The only thing the book and movie have in common is that mankind is unable to have children until, miraculously, one woman becomes pregnant, and the main character is a guy named Theo who tries to bring the woman to a safe place where she can give birth.

The similarities stop there. Characters that appear in the movie are nowhere in the book. And where some characters do overlap, their relationship they have with Theo is very different. The book doesn’t contain any of the politics or violence that is found in the movie. Instead there’s a strong but subtle spiritual element to the book. The movie is much faster paced and in some ways more entertaining. The book, though slower, I think depicts a more realistic picture of what mankind would be like if people stopped having children. 

Even though the book and the movie The Children of Men are very different, they’re both done extremely well. This was the first book I’ve read by P.D. James and thought she had a beautiful but straightforward writing style. Alfonso Caron is a great director (he did the best Harry Potter movie to date) and did an excellent job of depicting his view of a hopeless world.

I can’t think of another book or movie that’s based off the book that were so different yet so enjoyable. So when it comes to The Children of Men, watch the movie or see the book or read the book then watch the movie. It doesn’t matter. They’re both enjoyable. Just be forewarned that the stories are very different from each other.

(And for those who are unfamiliar with the works of P.D. James, you’ll find her book in the mystery section of the bookstore. Though The Children of Men doesn’t fit into that category, the rest of her books are mystery novels.)

Free Will Rocks

I don’t believe in fate. I believe that we are free to choose our own destiny. I believe that where we end up in life is largely because of good and bad decisions we make.

Yet when it comes to my wonderful marriage to Marathon Girl, I sometimes wonder if it was some unseen power that brought the two of us together.

I bring this up because Wednesday’s episode of LOST (great episode BTW) was very fatalistic. (And for those who aren’t fans of the show, stay with me. I’m going to talk mostly about my courtship to Marathon Girl instead of the episode.) Desmond discovered that no matter what choices he made, it was fated to end up in the island pushing the button every 108 minutes apparently to save the world. If he didn’t break up with Penelope that day then something would happen the next day or the day after to make them break up. The universe, we are told, has a way of course correcting itself.

Back to my courtship with Marathon Girl: Had this been any normal relationship it never would have made it past the first date. But it seemed like some invisible hand kept pushing Marathon Girl and I together no matter how many mistakes and dumb decisions we made. Here’s just a small sampling of what happened when we were dating that makes me think the two of us were destined to be together.

• It was by chance that Marathon Girl ended up going to the same church as I. Where most of her unmarried friends were going to a church for singles, Marathon Girl chose to attend a church where I was the only other single person.
• For several weeks I tried to think of a reason to talk with her on Sundays. Unable to think of any excuse to start a conversation, her photo appears on the front page of the sports section of the local paper announcing she won the Ogden Marathon.
• Our first date was the worst date either of us had been on. It was so bad that Marathon Girl ended up going back to her parent’s house that night and crying to her dad about it. Her dad, who is really big on making sure his daughters are treated with respect, shocked Marathon Girl and the rest of her family when he said that she should give me a second chance.
• Our second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth dates were equally uninspiring. Yet I still felt that I should keep asking Marathon Girl out and she kept saying yes.
• When we started dating, we were both in other relationships that weren’t going anywhere and that we didn’t feel were right. Yet somehow those relationships never got in the way of our seeing. For example, when I would call Marathon Girl and ask her our, I’d happen to ask her out on the only day of the week she didn’t have something planed with her then-boyfriend.
• After six lousy dates we ended up talking about where this relationship was headed. We both agreed that we should stop dating each other and just be friends. On my way out the door, I ask Marathon Girl was she was doing that weekend. She said she wasn’t doing anything. I asked her out. She accepted. And we ended up having a perfect date. And the relationship took off from there.

So after LOST, I asked Marathon Girl, who is also a big believer in free will, if she thought we would have been together if I hadn’t stayed in Ogden after my late wife’s death or if she had chosen to attend a different church or one of us had made a different decision along the way if we would have ended up together. We talked for a good hour about it and both concluded that somehow the universe would have found a way to bring the two of us together.

Maybe some things are meant to be.

Be My Valentine. Watch LOST.

I’ve been too busy to write my thoughts on last week’s episode of LOST until my lunch break today. Sorry they’re a week late. Promise to have a write up about tonight's episode tomorrow.

• Thought Juliet’s flashback was great. I felt I understood her motivations for wanting Ben dead a lot better and it’s nice to know she’s not officially part of The Others.
• I see a budding (love?) relationship going on between her and Jack. They’ve both been promised the way off the island by Ben but I’m willing to bet they won’t leave unless they can take the remaining survivors with them.
• That room Karl was held in was number 23. Hmmmm. Where have we heard that number before? Oh yes, that’s one of the numbers that had to be entered into the computer. Since the hatch imploded the writers have dropped at least one hint to those numbers in every episode.
• One blogger has done some audio work and discovered there was some clever backmasking going on in the audio in the brainwashing room. Apparently one of the things that are being said on the film is “Only fools are enslaved by time and space.”
• Having Juliet’s husband hit by a bus was great and creepy at the same time. I’d like to think it was an accident but The Others seem to have the resources necessary to get things done.

Have a great Wednesday. Celeberate V-Day by watching LOST.

To Aidan or Molly

I wrote the following poem in December of 2003 in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. Marathon Girl and I had been discussing what to name the baby if it was a boy or a girl. What follows just flowed from pen to paper. What surprises me on reading this again is that we ended up sticking with the first boy name we liked and using the girl name we liked when our daughter arrived almost three years later. To Aidan or Molly

The books say you’re the size of an avocado, and if we could see you swimming in a warm bath of amniotic fluid, we’d know if you’re a boy or a girl. In a month the doctor will strip away some of the mystery, but for now we like to lie in bed and imagine what you’ll be and give you names like Aidan or Molly.

And after the talk of names is done for the night, I’ll skip ahead a few chapters to see what you’ll look like nine weeks from now and read about the changes you’ll undergo before joining the family of a writer and a chemist.

But by the time you’re old enough to read this, I may not be a writer and your mother may not be a chemist and your name might not be Aidan or Molly but Jarom or Natalie or something that won’t be a thought in our minds until the moment you’re born.

– Abel Keogh 12/23/03

We Were Watching Unbreakable at the Time

Marathon Girl: "Have you ever met a woman that made you want to take off your wedding ring?" Me: "Yes"

Marathon Girl (appalled): "When did this happen?"

Me: "The first time I saw you."

I'm Alive

Yes, I’m alive. Been very busy with a sister-in-law’s wedding and work-related things. Will have a full review of LOST and catch up on a million other things soon.

Stay tuned.

It's Baaaaaack...

After being off the air since November, LOST returns tonight. I'm looking forward to watching it.  Hopefully its long hiatus hasn't caused a massive loss of interest. I’d like to see the show be around for another year or two.

I'll have a full review and thoughts on the episode tomorrow.