The spy swatter

Former FBI agent Eric O’Neill scoffed when his brother suggested his work nailing spy Robert Hanssen would make a great movie.

“The FBI will never allow it … I’ll go to jail,” Mr. O’Neill recalls saying.

But the case against Hanssen, among the most notorious spies in U.S. history, moved swiftly through the legal system, allowing Mr. O’Neill to tell, and sell, the key elements of his story to Hollywood.

“Breach,” a true crime thriller opening today, recalls Mr. O’Neill’s fateful pairing with Hanssen. Directed and co-written by Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”), “Breach” plays out like a feverish character piece with ugly truths streaked throughout.

A still-green agent (Ryan Phillippe playing Mr. O’Neill) is assigned to shadow longtime operative Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) under the pretext that the latter is suspected of using FBI computers for sexual hijinks. In reality, the FBI knows Hanssen is giving secrets to the Russians, and it wants Mr. O’Neill — still unaware of the true purpose of his surveillance mission — to help flush him into plain sight.

Hanssen is as brilliant as Mr. O’Neill is untested, and the latter puts his life and marriage in jeopardy to do the FBI’s bidding.

Mr. Ray, whose directorial debut captured the plagiarism scandal surrounding the New Republic’s Stephen Glass, found a second layer to the Hanssen debacle for his “Shattered” follow-up.

“For me, the movie is about how our mentors can teach us even when they’re failing,” Mr. Ray says. “Through his experience with Hanssen, Eric is forced to re-evaluate his feelings for his job, his marriage and his religion.”

Mr. Ray finds himself once more telling a true story, a difficult challenge in Hollywood, where character arcs and pat endings outweigh the truth.

The writer-director says his assignment this time was easier — but not by much.

“With ‘Shattered Glass,’ we had to hit a higher standard of accuracy,” he says. “With this movie, there were certain things we had to get right, like the behavior of Robert Hanssen … and never accuse him of something he didn’t actually do.”

The fudging comes with Mr. O’Neill’s character, but Mr. Ray is unapologetic.

“Eric O’Neill was one of 500 people working to try to nail this guy,” he says. “If you want to do a completely accurate telling of that story, I need 500 lead characters.”

Mr. O’Neill entered the project with no control over the finished product, worried more about the actor who would portray him than anything else.

Cast and crew embraced his input, and he walked away from the movie with a longing for more.

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