MOVIE REVIEW: Breach

In 2001 the FBI discovered they had one of the worst cases of blowback in American Intelligence history. Robert Hanssen was the true life double spy giving secrets to the Soviets for over 25 years. This much is also explained to us as the film begins by the former head of the Justice Department John Ashcroft. Robert Hanssen is a family man a devout Catholic and an extremely disgruntled civil servant of the FBI. The story itself is nothing new and the ending is abrupt and very unHollywood like, after all it is based in the real world so there is no real smoking gun and a shoot out to the death between FBI agents Hanssen and his clerk O'Neill. This is a character study of a man who was living two lives.

Eric O'Neil (Ryan Phillippe) is assigned as a FBI clerk to a top intelligence agent named Robert Hanssen(Chris Cooper). O'Neil's handler Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) tells Eric that his orders are to observe Hanssen's conduct as a possible sexual deviant, of course this spirals into a conspiracy to commit espionage. Eric must tread a fine line between the truth and lies in order to catch his boss passing information to the enemy.

Chris Cooper is amazing as the creepy, but efficient Hanssen. He owns his secret nature and his dual life as a deeply religious man who has utmost disdain for homosexuals and for strong women, ala Hillary Clinton. As the film deepens Hanssen's hypocrisy is shown as he enjoys a penchant for sex tapes, and tends to get drunk on occasion. He is a difficult man to read and he is Batman like in smoking out deception which makes him a formidable opponent. The question is why did he did it. Was it for money? Was it to get even on a government that has passed him up for promotion? Disillusionment with the constitution? The film explores all of these possibilities but they do not try to make a definitive conclusion so be prepared. This I think is a good thing because I don't think we'll ever truly know why Robert Hanssen did these things, but that is not the true intent of the film. As I said before it is a character study in deception and hypocrisy. Ryan Phillippe is good as the cocky and self sure O'Neil. Laura Linney is a bit stiff as O'Neil's handler but that is the role that she is playing. Again the star of this show is Hanssen himself and all of his peccadilloes. It is intriguing to watch and if this were October I would say that Chris Cooper would very easily earn an Oscar nomination.

Grade: 4 Buckets

COMICS: What's New With Marvel and DC

The state of Marvel comics today is a troubling one for me. I have found in the last year or so that my patience has been severely tried with this whole Civil War thing that Marvel has been waging. It was interesting at first but now I am bored and a little tired of my favorite heroes fighting each other. At first I welcomed this plotline of Captain America going rogue because he did not agree with the US stance on the Super Hero Registration Act. I liked the idea that Tony Stark, who originally did not like the idea, decided eventually to side with the government because he wanted to be a good American and obey the laws, okay noble enough. I even liked when the two leaders Cap and Iron Man began to butt heads on their Democrat vs. Republican ideologies regarding the constitutional entanglements regarding this registration. When Iron Man started hunting down and putting heroes into a secret prison in the Negative Zone, he effectively became a bad guy.

Sure you can have a good strong debate about whether super people should be running around unchecked; there is a good point for that. Unfortunately if you lock said heroes away in said secret prison when the hero has not even committed a crime, well that makes you, kind of a dictator. So my problem with Civil War now boils down to essentially a bad argument. Obviously, in the beginning of Civil War it was very easy to relate to Iron Man's situation and why, in his mind he had to side with the government, but I feel like now the writer's have taken this thing so far over the line that it is now impossible to see Iron Man as anything but a villain.

Two reasons come to mind so far, he and Reed Richards made a clone of Thor that went crazy and ended up killing a hero from the Thunderbolts, Goliath. Did Reed and Tony put the Thor clone back in the freezer, never to be used again? No of course not, they rewired the thing, with the hope of course, that this doesn't happen again. This may make them seem actually stupid rather than evil. The second is when Iron Man hired the worst of Spidey’s villains to beat the shit out of Spider-Man when he decided to cut and run from Tony's employ. What kind of hero employs super villains to kick the shit out of a beloved hero in order to, I guess, show that hero that he is on the wrong path? Sounds like Norman Osborn to me, (They hired him too by the way) but no, it is Tony Stark Iron Man. I don't mind disagreement with the heroes, I don't always mind when a hero goes rogue or bad for a time or even altogether, but what I do not like is a bunch of writers who meticulously build a case on two sides of the spectrum and after a few issues get sloppy and lose the direction of one of the arguments. They have essentially made Iron Man a villain, almost a year before his big Hollywood debut starring Robert Downey Jr. So I implore Marvel to stop with the House of M's and the Civil Wars, get back to telling individual stories about some of Marvel's greatest heroes. I know your sales are up, but give us a little breather here, just for a while--Y'know Spidey could use it.

Over at DC things seem pretty interesting. I have really enjoyed 52 as they focus mainly on second, third and even fourth tier heroes and villains as they try to make it through a year without the big three (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman). They have focused on characters like former police detective Renee Montoya, Booster Gold, The Question, Black Adam and his family, The Elongated Man Ralph Dibney, Steel, his rebellious niece and much much more. Even though the story itself seems global even universal the writers still seem to keep the themes localized to a few characters at a time allowing the story develop naturally with cohesiveness and a compelling mystery. Personally I wish they could do the 52 format forever. (I know, I know it would be really hard to sustain something like this every week for too long, but it would be cool nonetheless.) Lex Luthor's Everyman project storyline has been intriguing and I have really come to enjoy Steel and his character arc. Hell, even Booster Gold has been really interesting and that is quite a leap from a few years ago when I was hoping they would just kill the character--he was extremely annoying, plus his name is Booster Gold--something don't sound right about the name. Anyway, 52 has been flawless, this is exactly what Civil War should have been and I hope Marvel is taking notes.

In other comics I have laid out a couple of covers of some books everyone should check out in the near future. Enjoy.

The Boys

Green Lantern

Green Arrow


































Amazing Spider-Man

MOVIE REVIEW: Smokin' Aces

They just don't make action movies like they used to. Director Joe Carnahan is trying really hard to bring back the gore splattering nonsensical glorified action movie back to theatres and damn did he succeed hard core. The dialogue was crisp and funny. There were more than enough name celebrities from Jeremy Piven to Ray Liotta, and of course some of them don't make it out alive. It's refreshing to see a trailer on TV say to yourself this is going to be an hour and a half of smooth talking machine gun blowing mindless violence, and you actually get what you expected from start to finish. Of course this is not some think piece or even a suspense thriller aimed to keep you guessing. It is a true popcorn flick and you must prepare yourself for this as you step into the theatre. Once that's done, you'll enjoy it for all the madness it provides. Especially the zany antics of Jason Bateman, he truly steals this show.

So, Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) is a Las Vegas performer who wants to be a gangster. He gets in too deep with the Waste Management boys and of course as the previews suggest they want to Smoke his ass for being a government stoolie. The open contract on Aces brings out some very interesting crews, good and bad. You have your trio of crazed Nazi hit men called the Tremors (Maury Sterling, Kevin Durand and Chris Pine). You have the lesbian duo hit team of Georgia (Alicia Keys) and Sharice (Tariji P. Henson). The Latin torturer and hit man, Pasquale (Nestor Carbonell). Of course my favorite Lazlo Soot (Tommy Flanagan) the cloak and dagger hit man. Throw in three Bail Bondsmen (Ben Affleck, Peter Berg and Martin Henderson) and two Feds Carruthers (Ray Liotta) and Messner (Ryan Reynolds) and you have yourself a smorgasbord of destruction.

Not to mention appearances by Andy Garcia, Jason Bateman, Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, (Curtis Armstrong) the rapper Common and Matthew Fox. Pretty loaded and very fun so check this one out if you go in looking to have a good time and of course if you don't get squeamish when you see a lot of blood and really random violence.

Grade: 4 Buckets