The Prudent Hedonist

Gary Cole scares the crap out of me.

Ever since Office Space, I can’t see him in a movie without my skin starting to crawl. Even when he’s a good guy I find myself rooting against him and his coffee cup holding, Jennifer Aniston leg spreading creepy-ass self. This is especially a problem in movies like Breach, where he plays a very minor character, yet still almost manages to out-creepy the main character who is supposed to be creepy. It becomes easy to forgive Chris Cooper’s Robert Hanssen for secretly taping he and his wife having sex simply because he doesn’t have a cup of coffee in his hand while he’s doing it. I felt like I needed a shower after watching that movie last night, and it wasn’t just because Hanssen betrayed his country, jerked off to Catherine Zeta-Jones in his office, and had the audacity to cry about how hard life was on him. It was because of Lumbergh.

But you know what? Breach was a damn good movie, despite Lumbergh and Ryan Phillipe (who is a useless actor playing a useless FBI peon). You know why? Because Chris Cooper is f-ing brilliant, as is Laura Linney (who is creepy in her own right COUGHtrumanshowCOUGH). There’s no action, which is fine by me since this is more of a Le Carre spy story than a Ludlum one, the plot moves quickly enough, and there is even 5 minutes of pure geek love in which OC-48s and dynamic IPs are discussed by actors who obviously have no idea what they are.