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Breaking and Entering More at IMDbPro »

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4 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A sensation!, 19 January 2007

Author: keithtrumbo from United States

See the film for one reason only....Vera Farmiga. She plays the hooker and for the approximate 10 minutes she's on the screen it comes alive. The experience reminded me of seeing 'Easy Rider' when first released and being hit with a jolt when Jack Nicholson lit up the screen. She is electric! (See how under used she is in 'The Departed'...wouldn't know it's the same actress).The others are all good but she's like a wake-up call! As a morality play I find there's only so much wallowing in others messy lives that I can take when they continue down the road of self destruction. I had no sympathy at all for Jude/Robin/daughter characters and wished that Ray Winstone & Julitte Binoche had been the heart of this story...would have been much more alive and unpredictable. Well photographed, the film captures a dark edge of today's London that makes one want to keep looking over one's shoulder.

1 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
An arch film with a poor script and direction, 22 September 2009

Author: Mike Kleinsteuber from Bristol, UK

Wow, I was hoping for a lot more than this.

It's script reads like a play and is stilted in the way most plays are.

People just don't talk like this.

Combined with poor casting and stiff direction it makes for a self aware and distancing film.

It seems a little over rehearsed as well and therefore very unnatural.

If you like good films, like '21 Grams', where the direction and acting is assured and the script beautifully fluid, you won't like this piece of poor theatre.

I didn't really want to say much more but I have to write ten lines. The shooting style is also stiff and I couldn't imagine one of the actors actually 'being' one of the parts. Even Ray Winstone as the east-end detective was arch and stilted. His lines were appallingly written, where much of the normal banter between people who don't know each other was dispensed for lines that assumed a relationship. Just like most middle-class, self aware theatre pieces. In fact the longer I write this the worse it gets. Can I stop now please ?

2 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
soft and clever, 12 February 2007

Author: antoniotierno from Italy

I found it pleasant for many reasons, although it is a little bit depressing. Provides a close-up picture of peculiar aspects of London and Londoner's life, with men and women behaving cruelly and cheating on each other and moreover handles intimate issues in an elegant and intelligent way. In "Breaking and entering" we watch people engaged in heart games but we also know about topics like sex interface, race and class; intellectually speaking the experiment is certainly worthy of wide attention, though not brand new, and definitely works successfully. As for the emotional level everything passed the examination for sure

2 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
I expected much more than this, 12 November 2006

Author: gugute from Leeds, England

I went to see the film yesterday, expecting something very special - it is easy to understand when the cast and director is such a brilliant bunch of talented people. But something went wrong. I am not sure when the story turned the wrong way but it didn't feel right nor real or sincere anymore. Quite a disappointment, really. I think there was something incomplete and insincere about Will's and Amira's love story. Too predictable? Not enough feelings? Anyway, Jude Law,Robin Wright Penn and Martin Freeman give a good performance. But that's it. If you expect real life drama, real feelings or something that will keep your thoughts captured even when you leave the cinema - this is the wrong film. Maybe I had too much expectations but that is not surprising when you see names like that on the poster. Juliette Binoche disappointed me this time. All the others act great but that was just not enough.

2 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Ultimately a misfire, 11 November 2006

Author: Agamemnon7 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"Breaking and Entering" strikes me as an effort by the extremely talented Anthony Minghella to prove he is more than a director of epics set against impressive landscapes. He is successful with enough of "Breaking and Entering" to prove this point, but the film is still his least satisfying. Lead characters who (as both written by Minghella and played by Jude Law and Robin Wright Penn) seem like rejects from films we know all too well almost fatally weigh him down.

****SLIGHT SPOILERS INCLUDED FROM THIS POINT ON**** Minghella certainly starts the film off intriguingly, with a heist at Law's architectural firm that is well orchestrated and which is later quite audaciously repeated. Whether given maximum or minimal screen time, all of the characters we come into contact with at and around the firm, either working there or investigating the break-ins, hold our attention effortlessly. Vera Farmiga steals it and damn near walks off with the film as a working girl whose beat includes the surrounding alleyway.

A third attempted and failed theft leads Law to the home of his cleaner, played by Juliette Binoche. She is a Bosnian refugee, and her son, working for a group led by his uncle, is the fleeing thief followed by Law. Binoche is as good as Farmiga, albeit in a far less flashy role, and this film could easily garner Oscar nominations for the two actresses. Rafi Gavran is similarly impressive as the conflicted son.

Unfortunately, the central focus of the film initially and ultimately is on the Law/Wright Penn relationship, and the two seem to be giving strained, acting-class level performances to prove how emotionally raw they can get. They are not helped by the heavy-handed metaphors their dialogue is laden with (nor is Law helped by his character's referring to his penchant for metaphors). Though their scenes never seem to be up to the level of the rest of the film, the film takes a nose-dive from which it never recovers when they get into an argument in their car. This scene is almost comically overwrought and is even less convincing than the weakest of those which precede it, including their trips to a therapist and an accident involving Wright-Penn's daughter at Law's work site. Law's final act on behalf of Binoche and Gavran also rings fatally false.

So, in spite of some unquestionably involving plot twists and outstanding supporting performances, "Breaking and Entering" is ultimately a misfire.

11 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
Excellent, but seriously flawed., 28 September 2006

Author: romanhans from New York, New York

This is a terrific film with a few serious flaws, and anybody who says otherwise is probably motivated by income rather than honesty.

There's an unfortunate trend in movie-making where everything has to be meaningful. Every action has an arc, every character gets back what he gives. In some films, this works seamlessly. In others -- "Crash," for instance -- it turns the film into unbelievable claptrap.

The end of "Breaking and Entering," sadly, is claptrap. Characters start acting the way the screenwriter wanted them to, rather than the way they would. Personally, I'd rather the film was believable rather than tied up in a neat little bundle.

Other major complaint: Robin Wright Penn is not a great actress, and here she plays a miserable, one-note character. Unfortunately this is a pivotal role in the film, and it totally undermines the wisdom of the ending.

The film is still being worked on, so it could still be one of the year's best. At this point, though, it's like a terrific boxer who takes a dive at the end of a fight.

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