While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m a fan of Jude Law, I do find that I enjoy his films more often than not. So when I saw the DVD case for Breaking and Entering at my local rental store, I wondered why I’d never even heard of the movie before. This was strange, considering the fact that it also co-stars Robin Wright Penn and Juliette Binoche, two relatively well known actresses.
Then I saw that it was directed by Anthony Minghella, my least favorite director of all-time, and I could kind of guess why the film went nowhere at the box office. Nevertheless, I decided to give Breaking and Entering a try, just to see if Law’s presence could overcome Minghella’s. The short answer: not really.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Law stars as Will Francis, a partner in an architecture firm that has recently relocated their offices to a shady neighborhood in the King’s Cross district of London. We see at the beginning of the film that Will is having problems at home with his longtime girlfriend Liv (played by Penn) and Liv’s daughter Bea (Poppy Rogers).
One night, the firms offices get burglarized by a pair of teenaged cousins, who in turn are working for one boy’s father. These kids break in through the skylight, and are able to climb down to ground level by virtue of their incredible gymnastic skills. They then clean the offices out, taking everything from laptops to televisions to tiny figurines used in the architectural models.
When Will and his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman) find out about the burglary, they’re of course incredibly upset. Will in particular doesn’t know what to do because he had his “whole life” on his laptop — which apparently amounts to family photos and videos. The cops aren’t much help, and Will can see that they’re not likely going to expend much effort in catching the thieves. He’s right, as a few days later the place is hit again.
After that, Will starts staking out the alley in front of the offices. A few nights later, he sees one of the thieves in the act of breaking and entering once again, and this time gives chase on foot. Will follows the boy, Miro (Rafi Gavron), back to his apartment, sees the boy interact with his mother, and decides not to go in. Instead, he notes the address for future use.
The next day, Will goes back to Miro’s apartment. From a sign on the door, he knows that Miro’s mother is a seamstress, so he pretends that he needs some work done on a jacket. Will starts talking to Amira (Binoche), realizes that she’s a good person, and begins visiting her more and more — always on the pretext of needing his suits tailored. There’s some strange fascination there, and Will finds himself falling for Amira.
The rest of the film then deals with the various threads of Will’s life (his home situation with Liv, his work situation with the break-ins, and his developing relationship with Amira) and how they eventually all run together in a big mess.
My Reaction: First, I have to say that Breaking and Entering certainly wasn’t as much of a drag as the other Minghella films I’ve seen. This one clocks in at just two hours, which is significantly shorter than, say, The English Patient and Cold Mountain. I find that a shorter running time often does a lot to mitigate a film’s flaws because the audience doesn’t sit there suffering through scene after unnecessary scene, all the while dwelling on how much the movie sucks. That’s why I think it’s worth mentioning here.
But even though the story was mildly interesting, it seemed that there was something missing from it. It just didn’t click as a whole, and didn’t resonate with me at all. After thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided that the main problem for me was that Jude Law didn’t have any chemistry with either Penn or Binoche. He looked like he was just going through the motions with both of them, and as a result, I didn’t care about either relationship or which woman he ended up with. I liked Penn a lot more and found her to be a more believable match for Law, but there still wasn’t any chemistry there.
Besides the problems with lack of chemistry between the leads, I found most of the story to be too unrealistic for my tastes. I’m not going to list all the ridiculous occurrences here, but will say that the most glaring one for me was Will’s relationship with Amira. Ugh.
Overall, Breaking and Entering never felt like a cohesive enough film for my tastes. I didn’t understand what Will was after or why he was so fascinated by Amira’s life. I therefore couldn’t get into the story, and give the film just 5.5 stars out of 10.