Breaking and Entering

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Breaking and Entering

53% Liked It
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Breaking and Entering

Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Martin Freeman, Rafi Gavron, Ray Winstone

Professionally, things could not be better for Will (Law), but personally he spends less and less time at home with his chronically depressed partner (Wright Penn) and their troubled 13 year-old daugh...( read more  read more... )ter. When his offices are repeatedly burgled, his investigations lead him to an apartment the teenaged thief shares with his mother (Binoche) – the woman with whom Will embarks on an unexpected journey of betrayal and passion.

Id: 10892090

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Recent Reviews

Breaking and Entering Recent Reviews
  • RossCollinsUK
    October 23, 2008
    RossCollinsUK
    A typical British TV drama with an ultimately pointless story, but pleasant enough to watch. The London settings and brief bits of parkour add interest.
  • EarthlyAlien
    October 15, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    "You steal someone's heart, that's really a crime."

    It's quite a treat (particularly these days) to watch a film and not be able to guess how it will end; where the decisions the characters reach come after they have considered their options, weighed the alternatives, and...( read more) know what they're getting into. Breaking and Entering is like that, and though it's not a wholly successful film, it's deeply felt, intelligent, and contains fine work by its cast, especially the great Juliette Binoche.

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    The story: Jude Law plays Will, an architect in London beginning a massive project of neighbourhood revitalization. At home, his wife Liv (Robin Wright Penn) is struggling to deal with her troubled daughter and her increasingly estranged relationship with Will, who for his part is concerned, has other things on his mind. "If it were a contest to love her more," he tells her, "I'd let you win."

    One night, a burglar breaks into Will's office and steals the equipment (it must've cost Apple a pretty penny to have the characters bemoan how easy their lost computers were to use). This thief is Miro (Rafi Gavron), a second-generation Bosnian teenager who works as a "monkey" for a local gang, breaking and entering into buildings with his uncanny acrobatic ability. Anthony Minghella (the brilliant man behind The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley), milks these scenes for all they're worth, shooting them in single takes, and almost convincing us that Gavron is actually performing them.

    When Miro breaks into the office a second time, Will begins staking it out to catch him, along with his friend and co-worker Sandy (Martin Freeman). One night he almost does, following him home and meeting his mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche), who works as a tailor. Will, understandably, is attracted to her, and starts finding excuses to see her. He doesn't mention that he knows Miro is a thief, and Miro, who has kept Will's laptop (I think it was a Mac) eventually looks through the pictures, and learns his connection to Will.

    That's all you get of the plot from me, though I will say that, having seen hundreds of films in my short lifetime, and knowing a lot of the tricks, I was still surprised by this one. That's what I liked about it. The performances are strong (though Penn's character doesn't quite work), the photography is beautiful, but what really elevates the film is how mature it is, how the characters consider their options, work to save themselves, but don't feel right about it. Nonetheless, I would've liked one more turn of the knife at the end. There is a moment that is like a Mexican stand-off cliché in an action film, where everyone is pointing a gun at someone, and everyone has one pointed at them. Here, everyone's lives could be destroyed in an attempt to save their own, and maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think someone would've shot.

    The film does falter in its third act. It lets people off easy, and raises tough questions, only to dismiss them with easy answers. There are a few distractions I could've done without (instead of the sub-plots about the cleaning woman or prostitute, I would've liked to have seen more with Amira's friend, who only appears for one scene but whose actions are filled with dramatic potential). All in all though, this is still an engaging and surprisingly thrilling film, that's all the more special for being Minghella's farewell work. He will be missed.
  • thmtsang
    June 14, 2008
    thmtsang
    The most dramatic thing is the movie title. Poor storyline. Weird people. Bad accents. An hour in and still nothing has happened. Waste of time. Avoid!
  • 76Majikat
    June 8, 2008
    76Majikat
    Entertaining and different, a love triangle with unusual circumstances. An easy laid back watch.
  • Redlats
    May 29, 2008
    Redlats
    There are a lot of sub story lines in this movie - Liv's daughter, the hooker at King's Crossing, immigrant crime, what is urban environmental architecture, depression, cheating, etc. -- the story goes around in circles a bit. I don't understand Jude Law's character (Will).
  • silverbrain
    November 28, 2009
    silverbrain
    Interesting premise, lost at the end.
  • michaelcorleone
    November 21, 2009
    michaelcorleone
    None of the ideas in this film feel like they're given enough consideration. It's a script full of interesting material and characters, but ultimately it's too languid and the occasional emphasis is on the wrong things. Nevertheless, there are a lot of very well-executed scenes a...( read more)nd the overall effect isn't a negative one. It's a gently beautiful movie, with striking photography and sure-handed direction from veteran Anthony Minghella. The performances are uniformly strong, with a stand-out from the great talent that is Jude Law. As a closing work to a fantastic career, it isn't Minghella's most noteworthy work. However, it's still a well-made and fairly interesting film.
  • theloneowl
    November 14, 2009
    theloneowl
    Inutile.
    Però c'era Ed Westwick stranamente agile, da segnare sul calendario.
  • magnolia12883
    September 23, 2009
    magnolia12883
    Anthony Minghella's attempt at a "hyperlink" film is a hit-and-miss affair connecting a cross-section of characters from both sides of the economic and cultural divide in modern day London via a series of astonishing and perplexing robberies; the results are intermittently absorb...( read more)ing. Will (Jude Law) works for an architecture and and landscape design firm with his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman of TV's "The Office" - the UK version, of course), and the two are planning a "built landscape as art" in the middle of a run-down and dangerous section of the King's Cross section of London. He is in the waning days of a ten-year relationship with Liv (Robin Wright Penn), a Swedish-American who has a 13-year-old daughter from a prior relationship. Her name is Bea (Poppy Rogers), and she is a remarkable young gymnast with borderline Autism and serious behavior issues. Then there's Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian refugee/widow, a seamstress, who lives in a housing project with her 15-year-old son Miro (Rafi Gavron), and who simply minds her own business. One night, Will and Sandy's offices are robbed of several computers, including some personal plans and photos belonging to Will. It seems Miro is a gymnast in his own right, though he and a relative use his talents to break into the place and steal from it - he goes to the roof to see the housekeepers plug in the security codes through the skylight and then climbs in through it to the floor below to deactivate the codes and let his friends in; they will attempt two more robberies. Soon, a hard-boiled Cockney detective (Ray Winstone, also in Scorsese's "The Departed" and - I think - wearing the same leather jacket) is on the case. Meanwhile, Will and Sandy stake out the place, and one night their stakeout is interrupted by Oana (Vera Farmiga, also from "The Departed"), a Romanian prostitute who, for who knows what reason, buys Will coffee, sits in his car, plays her music, hits on him shamelessly, and doesn't seem to charge him for anything. Gradually, Will (who has a history of infidelity) will fall for Amira, discover her son's connection to the robberies via some evidence returned to the scene of the crime, and he will have a choice to make. Anthony Minghella is the writer-director of such modern epics as "The English Patient" (1996), "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999; his best film to date) and "Cold Mountain" (2003). Here, with a relatively short though luxurious 120 minute running time and a modern setting, Minghella has made his British equivalent of an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film (ala' "Babel," "Amores Perros" or "21 Grams") without the amazing results; the film feels like it's going to arrive at some grand conclusion, engages in melodrama along the way, and is shameless in its manipulation of the characters like pawns on a chessboard. In this sense, the film resembles a so-called "hyperlink film," a sub-genre of modern cinema that has been defined in an article in Film Comment by Alissa Quart, who suggested the structure was invented by Robert Altman ("Nashville," "Short Cuts") and has been carried through to more modern fare such as "Crash," "Traffic" and "Syriana," among others. The idea is to see how a seemingly random group of characters are connected - whether they realize it or not - by accident, fate and circumstance. Minghella seems to be attempting the same sort of film here, with somewhat less successful results. Ultimately, this is an interesting series of notions never quite given full breath of life; still, it's well-made and worth a look.
  • melonflix
    September 21, 2009
    melonflix
    It's a good film... but not that good to see it more than once.
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