Minghella successfully returns to smaller more intimate fare.
Breaking and Entering (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:121
Fresh:41
Rotten:80
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: This class warfare drama feels contrived and superficial: characters don’t act logically as the movie manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.
Theatrical Release:10-11-2006
Synopsis: BREAKING AND ENTERING may lack the quality and scope of Anthony Minghella's previous work such as THE ENGLISH PATIENT and COLD MOUNTAIN, but it's an interesting, character-driven drama. Jude Law... BREAKING AND ENTERING may lack the quality and scope of Anthony Minghella's previous work such as THE ENGLISH PATIENT and COLD MOUNTAIN, but it's an interesting, character-driven drama. Jude Law (CLOSER) plays Will, a landscape architect who succeeds in business but finds his personal life is tougher to navigate. He has been with Liv (Robin Wright Penn, FORREST GUMP) for years, but it's difficult to connect with her due to her worry over her teenage daughter. When Will catches a teenage boy named Miro (Ravi Gafron) breaking into his office, he chases the thief home. He later meets the boy's mother, a Bosnian refugee played by Juliette Binoche (CHOCOLAT). His anger at Miro is quickly transformed into attraction to his mother, further complicating his relationship with Liv. This is Law's third teaming with Minghella (after THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and COLD MOUNTAIN), and their partnership rewards the audience with a typically good performance from the actor. Wright Penn and Binoche also display the talent people have come to expect, but it's the supporting cast that shines here. As Will's business partner, Sandy, Martin Freeman plays second fiddle to Law, but he possesses a similar charm as his character on THE OFFICE. As a persistent prostitute, Vera Farmiga (THE DEPARTED) is one of the movie's highlights, providing laughter in what is largely a very bleak film. Gavron is a capable young actor as Miro, but his performance is most astonishing for his skills at the sport of parkour, a kind of urban acrobatics on display throughout the film. If only these characters were half as adept at life and relationships as Gavron is at leaping from building to building.... [More]
Starring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman
Starring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Rafi Gavron, Poppy Rogers
Director: Anthony Minghella
Director: Anthony Minghella
Producer: Timothy Bricknell
Composer: Gabriel Yared
Studio: MGM
Reviews for Breaking and Entering
What are the meaningful connections between these people's lives? Are they real and significant, or are they just plot contrivances, the manipulation of pawns in an onscreen board game?
Writer-director Anthony Minghella tries to base his story on the messy, unpredictable nature of human emotional response. What he gets is mostly a mess.
Plays by its own rules and hopes prospective audiences are patient enough to follow characters whose lives are more rewarding to watch than the ho-hum plot surrounding them.
The first third of the movie is intelligent and sets up an intriguing premise. Then the plot takes unconvincing and unlikely turns that result in an ending that feels false and forced.
It doesn't have the kind of flair, impact or resonance we've come to expect from the director.
For all its contrivances (including Vera Farmiga's improbably erudite whore), Breaking and Entering has its finger on the pulse of contemporary London life and possesses its share of fleeting delights.
The film gives us hope about our ability to become better people when we're faced with difficult situations, but it's not sentimental.
A smart, well-mannered film that could use a little more juice and fire.
Breaking and Entering just hangs there, positing its theme of how the personal becomes political and the political becomes personal over and over, without ever grabbing either your heart or your mind.
Seeing the film is like attending a refined cocktail party where social problems are clucked over and personal tensions are politely disregarded. When it's over, you wish you'd gone to a bar where people know how to have an argument and throw a punch.
A case of grade-A professionalism totally oblivious to the inanity of the work being put forth.
The fact that three major characters are named 'Will,' 'Liv' and 'Bea' should indicate Minghella's commitment to subtlety.
Minghella has drawn intimate love stories from supernatural fantasies and widescreen epics, but not even he can turn sappy corn into social commentary.
Minghella seems intent on making Merchant-Ivory films now, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Go see Anthony Minghella's jagged new drama, Breaking and Entering, and you'll feel as if you're getting two movies for the price of a single ticket. The bad news? Only one of these stories is actually worth your money.
Breaking and Entering is so bloodless that even Minghella's best ideas come off as wan and pale. We're aware of the angst and confusion these characters suffer, and yet the movie shows us nothing so messy as real pain.
Weak as both a forbiden afair drama due to the non existant chemistry of the illicit couple, and as a sociological exploration of the relationships between the rich white man and the ghetto boy, or even as a political approach of the Bosnian drama, B&E on
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