Product Details

• Actors: William Hurt, Mary-Louise Parker, David Strathairn, Ron Silver, Hilit Pace
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: May 20, 2003
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00008K7AV
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #356,112 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Guesswork on a Master Mind, July 27, 2004

By 

S. S. Yao "fireballinthesky" (Vancouver Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Master Spy: Robert Hanssen Story (DVD)

This is one of the best real-life story adapted movie I've seen. William Hurt is amazing in portraying the enigmatic Hanssen. His performance saved this film from its lack of depth and exciting plots beneath the obvious. Hanssen's motivation for his betrayals to everyone he loves is never elaborated, despite all the internal dialogues and rationalization. Though awkward at socialing and eerie in outlook, highly intelligent Hanssen made his moves with intention and calculation to understand struggling souls like himself under surreal yet intriguing circumstances. Studying his best friend, a strip dancer and intelligence officers from both camps, in depth and in person, must have given him great joy and revelation on himself, a modern-day Faust trying to figure out meanings of his own bewildering existence while finding a way to salvation. Writer Mailer and Director Schiller had obvious done their homework and interviewed key people related to Hanssen which gave certain degree of reality to the scrip. But I still feel somewhat disappointed about the fragmented profile they demonstrated via this movie. Maybe Norman Mailer is just getting old and therefore relies too much on his insights while ignoring the relevant details which would have enriched the story so much more.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Fair Look at the Hanssen Case, July 30, 2008

By 

David Blackburst - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master Spy: Robert Hanssen Story (DVD)

Director Lawrence Schiller has a definite style to his films: true-life stories (like the JFK assassination and the O.J. case) with a no-nonsense re-telling of the story as he understands it. Master Spy is in that mold. Robert Phillip Hanssen is presented as an FBI official struggling to have his intellect recognized, and he succumbs to the lure of espionage for the Soviets. For Hanssen, it was partly for money; but more important, he wanted to be the cleverest spy ever. Knowing that others before him (like CIA's Aldrich Hazen Ames) had been caught when Soviet intelligence officers defected to the US or became "agents-in-place," Hanssen decided to never let them know his real identity. (He may have slipped-up and been IDed when he called the KGB from a phone booth they were watching.) He started feeding them fairly low-level stuff, but soon graduated to feeding them everything he could get his hands on. Beyond betraying many Soviets who were working for Western intelligence, he betrayed a secret FBI tunnel under the new Soviet Embassy in Washington.

The film is good in showing Hanssen's actions, but weak in showing his motivations. Another annoying point: One of the most interesting aspects of the case is how he was caught: Knowing the evidence showed there was a mole in US intelligence, the FBI (and later CIA) "leaked" to both current and former KGB/SVR officers that they were willing to pay handsomely for the identity of "Ramon," Hanssen's chosen code name. Sure enough, a post-KGB officer took the bait and turned over the entire KGB file on Ramon. The first gem it contained was a recording of the fatal phone call, and FBI officers realized in horror that it was their colleague. The file also contained a plastic trash bag Ramon had used to package FBI documents years before. Analysis turned up Hanssen's fingerprints on the bag. This whole dramatic sequence was reduced to a few sentences in this film. Hanssen's arrest was also very dramatic, but that, too has a wooden quality in this film.

William Hurt is fair but not great in his portrayal of Hanssen. The always interesting Ron Silver (himself a one-time CIA applicant) is very good as a composite of Hanssen's FBI superiors.

Not a great film, but not bad for anyone who enjoys true spy stories.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good companion DVD to "Breach", December 3, 2008

By 

Thriller fan (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master Spy: Robert Hanssen Story (DVD)

This is a good companion DVD to "Breach." Whereas "Breach" focuses on how Hanssen was caught, "Master Spy" shows exactly what Hanssen did and suggests some of the reasons why he may have done it.(Unlike "Breach," "Master Spy" was made with the cooperation of some of Hanssen's family members.)The acting is uniformly good and the story gives viewers some interesting insights into Hanssen's possible motivations.