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Breaking and Entering More at IMDbPro »

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86 reviews in total

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1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Serendipity and the Resulting Emotional Changes, 12 May 2007

Author: gradyharp from United States

Anthony Minghella is an artist of distinction. His current successful role as writer and director of BREAKING AND ENTERING once again demonstrates how subtlety and economy can enhance the impact of a well-devised and well-paced strange story, leaving the viewer with a true sense of dramatic climax and awe. This is one of those under the radar films that is as fine as any before the public in the past year.

Will Francis (Jude Law) is a successful landscape architect who with his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman) has just begun a 'community restoration' project in the down and out King's Crossing area of London. Housed in an old building in that area from which the project will develop, they work with the finest of computers and business equipment - an easy target for locals to vandalize. Will lives with the Swedish American Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and her autistic young daughter Bea (Poppy Rogers) in a relationship that after 10 years has grown stale: the friction results in retreating into silence instead of communication. After two burglaries at the business occur, thefts that include Will's own laptop with all of his personal data, Will and Sandy begin nightly watches, hoping to catch the thieves. In this seedy area Will befriends an immigrant hooker Oana (a brilliant Vera Farmiga) while Sandy defends an accused cleaning girl immigrant Erika (Caroline Chikezie) until the two see two young boys breaking and entering on night. The lads are teenage Bosnian immigrants, good kids who are going with the flow of finding the means of survival in London. The boys, Miro (Rafi Gavron) and Zoran (Ed Westwick), escape the chase, though Will's pursuit results in his discovering Miro's home in the projects. Knowing that Miro's mother Amira (Juliette Binoche) takes in tailoring, Will drops off a jacket to be mended and is attracted to the beautiful unattached Amira with whom he gradually begins an affair.

Meanwhile Liv is in therapy with Rosemary (Juliet Stevenson) and attempts to include resistant Will in hopes of healing their domestic chaos. Their relationship is on the brink of dissolution, both adults are fatigued by the management of Bea, a situation which encourages Will to increase his participation in Bea's care, a decision which leads to an accident for Bea at Will's place of work. Eventually Miro and Zoran are captured by the police (Ray Winstone) and Amira is so devastated by the possible incarceration of her son that she takes measures with Will to secure herself. It is the manner in which the 'crime' by the boys triggers the breaking and entering of each of the lives, crippled by shells of defense, which serves as the sensitive resolution of the story.

The cast is perfection, providing plum roles for Law, Binoche, Penn, Farmiga, Winstone, Freeman and newcomer Gavron, each creating credible characters who though with less than pure lives completely drawn our empathy. Minghella's story is important and entertaining and the filming techniques are bold and innovative. Gabriel Yared provides yet another beautiful musical score and the added featurettes are informative - far better than the usual DVD fillers. A superb film, this. Grady Harp

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1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Dour drama creates ambivalence, 25 January 2007

Author: fertilecelluloid from Mountains of Madness

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Jude Law, an architect, is feeling terribly distant from his Swedish wife (Robin Wright Penn) and her autistic daughter, so when his King's Cross offices are burgled, a search for greater intimacy begins. A deeply personal tale and a portrait of London's many faces, "Breaking and Entering" is initially compelling. Unfortunately, its second act sags and its resolution comes across as contrived. Juliet Binoche is pretty terrific as the mother of a boy involved in the burglaries at Law's offices; Law is attracted to her and hopes she can fill his need for intimacy. Not unexpectedly, their relationship creates interesting complications. Music by Gabriel Yared, who also scored director Minghella's "The English Patient", has a subdued, dour quality that also describes the overall tone of this movie. There is very little contrast here and almost no sunshine in the bleakness. The feeling one is left with towards this piece is ambivalence.

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1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A must buy!, 20 January 2007

Author: no-speech-girl from Lisbon, Portugal

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

You can only distinguish honesty if you know dishonesty.

I fell in love with Minghella only with Cold Mountain (loved, loved). So i was looking forward for this movie. And i didn't get disappointed. At all.

And i loved how he mixed moments of great tension with some humor. That's Vera Farmiga's character. Very funny. She play's a prostitute who hangs with Will (Jude Law) when he plants himself outside his office (the object of breaking and entering).

At first it was weird to see Binoche as a Bosnian mom. But she plays it wonderfully, even speaking the language! Jude Law is very charming, as always, giving a great charisma to his character.

The end may be a little too perfect, but the movie is good for itself.

A delight!

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2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Inconsistent Movie, 26 January 2008

Author: safinahmed from Portugal

When I first came to check for info on this movie, I thought this would be a bad (or at least, not very good) movie.

But this movie surprised me, it catched me almost from the beginning, the big problem is that it loses you in the middle, and then picks you back up a little further down the road. It's a movie full of ups and downs in interest, otherwise it could have had a better review I suppose.

I didn't care much for Jude Laws performance (not that is was bad, it was nothing special), but I really liked Juliette Binoche in this movie (and I not her biggest fan) you can feel real emotions with her acting, and for me she's the main reason to stick with the movie when it's loosing you.

As for the hole plot of the movie, I would say it's interesting, not very believable though.

This movie shouldn't be your top pick of the week, but definitely try to watch it.

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2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Good intentions developed on a very slow movie, 10 December 2007

Author: collipal-1 from Argentina

I'm not a fan of director Anthony Minghella.His films The English Patient and The Talented Mr.Ripley,in spite of being acclaimed,had bored me with extremely slow developments.The only film directed by him that I liked was Cold Mountain and it was not great.Breaking and Entering,his most recent film,had good intentions but it's enormously sloooooow.This film has irrelevant scenes which do not add anything to the story(specially,the moments in which the prostitute appears).The movie's running time is of 2 hours but it's so slow that the running time seems to be of 4 hours.The film has a few good things like good intentions,a very good performance from Juliette Binoche and a good characters' development.But that things do not save this movie from being a tedious and extremely slow experience.I do not recommend Breaking and Entering.

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2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Ethical pablum., 1 July 2007

Author: Paul Creeden from Boston, MA, USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is a film of the times. Confused, soulless and rich with the narcissistic Angst of the wealthy. But, after all is said and done, the wealthy control projects which are staffed by superstars. The acting is excellent, as would be expected of Ms. Binoche, Ms. Wright, Mr. Winstone and Mr. Law. The script is halting, labored, overly mannered. The story has no ethical point whatsoever, though it implies a great deal of depth in that area. All the behaviors of the tortured characters are muddied in motivation and equivocation. We are supposed to believe that the Serb-Bosnian adolescent is really a great kid, when he's not being and accomplished thief/acrobat. We are supposed to believe that the English detective, played by Winstone, who is a slum kid grown into a modern angry man, sees this immigrant kid as a poor Dickensian waif, worthy of a second (albeit third or fourth) chance. The wealthy protagonist, played by Law, is so screwed up he has to be told what to do to be compassionate or ethical or even human. He seems somehow absolved by the script for being a self-absorbed, spoiled, whining prig. This is a film which will be viewed twenty years hence by an audience which may well say, "What were they thinking?" Like all those 1980s movies with big hair and shoulder pads. And, speaking of the 1980s, just say "No" to this one if you have the choice.

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3 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Disappointing, 28 May 2007

Author: Gordon-11 from Hong Kong

This film is about how a man deals with the repeated break-ins into his architectural firm.

I find this film rather average. Though Jude Law is amazing on the eyes as usual, I still find the movie rather lacklustre. The acting is not bad, in fact I find Juliet Binochet rather convincing as a Slavic immigrant. The relationship between Jude Law and Robin Wright Penn is tense, with the cracks between the relationship well hightlighted. However, I think the problem is that there are no emotional high points in the movie. Everything is plainly told, and there is not much to chew on after the movie. I find this movie a disappointment, maybe that's because I expected so much from Anthony Minghella.

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0 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
therapeutic effects, 16 March 2007

Author: (baiser_gat) from Canada

I did not watch the movie yet, but was told yesterday that movie was playing in Ottawa and was suggested to go immediately and send as many as possible to watch it since the movie was described as an extraordinary!!! It is one of the best some of my friends seen ever; they believe that movie could even have the therapeutic and profound effects on people from former Yugosavia living outside of the country and dealing with the issues of survival and overwhelming pain. The idea is that by watching the movie we could learn more about it and explore it in its depth, but this exploration should be a start for a further growth and development; the life might be beautiful with this (almost) incurable pain that however often might be the source of creativity.

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5 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Breaking and Entering Your Wallet, 12 May 2007

Author: vitaleralphlouis from United States

This movie is offered as an "Exclusive" at a major video chain, so we gave it a try even though it never played theaters. Absolutely nothing of any viewer interest happens during the initial 35 minutes. Well, OK, we learn that being acrobatic comes in handy in the burglar trade. Well, 3 cheers and a dog biscuit! The story is essentially nil, there is no character development, and the London settings are not used to any advantage.

My wife fell into Z-city and my eyelids were drooping so I stopped this DVD and put on "Music and Lyrics" and we both woke up. Where the 7, 8, or 9 ratings came from, I have no clue. This film is flat, boring, and a waste of your time.

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9 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
If it Breaks, Enter, 26 September 2006

Author: Clayton Davis (Claytondavis@awardscircuit.com) from New Jersey

Breaking and Entering Anthony Minghella's latest work is as anomalous as it is rapture. The Academy Award winning director of "The English Patient" has brought brutal honesty of a different type of culture but I'm afraid the middle acts of the film leave the audience too disenchanted and by the final act when it finally does pick up, we are already lost in the quarrel of deceit and dialogue.

Minghella brings us the story of Will, (Jude Law) an architect who has just opened up his own company with his long time business partner Sandy (Martin Freeman). Unfortunately, they open up on a rough side of London and have a few "B & E's" before taking it upon themselves to sniff out the culprit. The culprit however, is a young fifteen year old boy, Miro (Rafi Gavron) who works for a gang of thugs who consists of his late father's side of the family. The acrobatic Miro must jump railings, rooftops, etc. in order to shake authorities but somehow finds himself intrigued by Will's architecture. When Will is not sniffing, he is distancing himself away from his long time girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and her behaviorally challenged daughter Beatrice. The strain on their relationship has been ten years in the making with their unmarried lifestyle and soon to become familiar nature.

After many nights of sitting and having conversations with the local and extremely humorous prostitute, (Vera Farmiga) Will discovers his guilty party and pursues Miro all the way to his home. In Miro's home he lives with his hard-working and loving mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche) and Will's attraction is sparked immediately before even fathoming a mention of Miro. The two start a very involved and passionate love affair with Amira having no knowledge of Miro's extracurricular events.

Minghella does a fantastic job of wrapping us in the story from the premise of the film but somewhere in the ladder we are left on the side of the road in an unbalanced rising action. In its 120 minutes of running time, the audience meets and greets the characters; we are brought intimately with each of them and like Minghella's previous works, he introduces us with much dialogue but in this case it was not enough to suffice. While I admire the honesty, truth and expression of human weakness of the picture, I needed a little more to pull me along the story to keep me progressing.

As usual Gabriel Yared's score is evident and gives great conviction to each scene along with the beautiful camera work and editing and fortunately, the performances were sufficient enough to keep me intrigued in the story. Jude Law regrettably is "Dan" from "Closer" for a good duration of the film but rest assure by the final act he gives his best performance to date. Not entirely sure what happened the first 2/3 of the film but Law completely lost himself in "Will" for the resolution and emerged a true leading thespian. It is Law's final performance that saves the film from being ordinary to something a little more. I'm uncertain of his chances with the "Gold Man" because we've seen a Jude Law like this before and he's had excellent chemistry with Minghella as we saw in his previous nominated works. I suppose there's too much flaw in his armor to carry it all the way to battle.

Juliette Binoche has proved time and time again that she is a reliable actress to carry a film. As the refugee survivor "Amira," Binoche stretches out her legs to give us someone utterly heartbreaking and unlike what we've seen before. The admiration for "Amira" is in her strong and undying espousal for her son. Amira is determined to set her son straight on a path and you can't deny the love between them. It is in the intimate moments of laughing and kissing between the mother and son, that we find the emotional center of the tale. Minghella really deserves praise for directing and showing us one of the best mother-son moments of contemporary cinema. Binoche and Gavron are truly that good.

The standout and M.V.P. of the film is the no-less than perfect Robin Wright-Penn as Oscar's favorite lady; the suffering wife or in this case girlfriend. Wright has taken large steps in Indie films the past few years but she gives the Swedish and beautiful Liv, a sense of humanity that actresses like Winslet and Weisz can only pull off. "Liv" is an attentive mother, a loving girlfriend, but a woman with a tortured soul that by credits end you bring home with you. Despite some of her accent flaws, which came from time to time, Wright never leaves "Liv" unattended and gives the film the backbone needed to walk a very rough road. If there's any aspect of the film to nominate it is Robin Wright-Penn for charisma, zeal and dedication to a role that sounds formula-matic on paper but no formula in sight. There's much fondness in "Liv" and many women can relate to her character which is probably why she's so great.

As this was being touted as Minghella's best work to date, I might pass on that notion. We could see a worthy screenplay nomination and a much needed Maria Bello-like nomination for Robin Wright-Penn. (I'm telling you, it's that good) Other than that, nothing spectacular about the movie although it may appeal to crowds of Minghella stalkers and lovers but not to this critic.

Grade: **1/2/****

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