Wonderful character development!

Just so...so bad

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The dangers of indulging in a little dramatic movie like this every now and again is that too often, you get burnt. But before you start, let me state that this film does have several reasons that make it stand out from the crowd. Director Anthony Minghella knows how to shoot a film, thesps like Jude Law and Juilette Binoche have both experience and reputations to draw on and people like me still get a rush of blood thinking about Underworld's work for the soundtrack to "Trainspotting". It would be a rare day indeed if this sort of pedigree were wasted in some sort of plodding, unrealistic time-waster but alas, today is that day. Despite me ignoring my first impressions and sticking with it, this is one of those films where characters mumble lines of dialogue you'd never hear in real life and very little plot development makes any sort of sense.Throwing himself into his work redeveloping the area around Kings Cross, architect Will (Law) struggles to cope at home with his half-Swedish girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright-Penn) and her semi-autistic gymnast daughter Beatrice (Poppy Rogers). After a break-in at his office, Will eventually finds the culprit - a fifteen year-old teenager from Sarejevo called Miro (Rafi Gavron) - and follows him home where he becomes enchanted by Milo's mother Amira (Binoche). As Will and Amira start seeing each other, Will begins to question his life while Amira slowly discovers what her son has been doing behind her back...Like I said, there are things to recommend about "Breaking And Entering" and for me, the acting is the first noticeable plus. Binoche, Law and Wright-Penn are excellent as are most of the supporting cast, especially Rogers and Martin Freeman as Will's partner Sandy. The only fly in the ointment is Ray Winstone's horribly stereotyped cop investigating the break-in, who always feels like he's two seconds away from rolling over his car's bonnet and driving at high speed through some cardboard boxes. Other positives are Minghella's direction which gives the film a suitably urban feel to match the seediness of Kings Cross perfectly and the soundtrack by Underworld is just brilliant, without being intrusive. The ingredients were there but the film's leisurely pace and frankly odd story undermines all that hard work. Take the fact that Will & Sandy, instead of hiring security to look after their office, decide to spend the night in their car staking the place out but end up being bothered by prostitutes. The dialogue is also pretty poor - Law's character, who seems to spend an abnormally large amount of time staring into the middle-distance, delivers lines of such cryptic complexity that I had no idea what he was on about half the time.In some ways, it reminded me of Binoche's English-speaking debut "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" which is beautifully acted and directed but spend the entire duration going absolutely nowhere and ultimately ended up being a very pretty but dull film. "Breaking And Entering" suffers from similar problems, being far too pretentious and not nearly believable enough for me to care. In fact, Will's generally unlikeable nature put me off just as much and other than his good looks and the need to protect her son, I couldn't see what attracted Amira to him in the first place. I'm a great admirer of Binoche (in every respect) but this film doesn't really do much for her CV. "Breaking And Entering" might offer something for viewers used to dramas such as this but personally, I just wanted something to happen or quite honestly, for the film to abandon Will and follow Winstone's heavily-clichéd copper for a few hours while he cracked some heads down in the East End. Instead, the film stuck with a bunch of boring people doing not very much while I wondered how so many talented people could simultaneously have an off-day.

Good actors, good people and production and an idea for a film that could have resulted in something great, which for me, it didn't.Being Swedish it's even more "fun" since the references is there in many ways besides the obvious ones. Cold, suicidal and strange swedes, yeah, a lot of the stuff that's being produced in terms of movies and TV-shows really go for that. Some can be very convincing in it's minimalistic way and overall gray feel. This movie felt very "over-done" and over-acted. Not very convincing at all. Again, being Swedish, I sometimes get very frustrated with the more theater feeling that often overshadows a typical Swedish film or TV-show. And this movie feels like it's on purpose tries to achieve just that. That theater acting instead of trying to be a convincing story with real people. Instead we end up with scenes and dialog that again and again seems constructed.For me, sorry to say, there's more life in either Housebunny or Rambo.

Gosh. Here's a film that not only went directly to video, but horror of horrors, it was directly to Blockbuster.And yet it is precisely in the center of one of the six nodes of film perfection. Its that place where cinematic qualities recede and theatrical drama of the Chekov variety is delivered: should in conflict; souls in pain; souls striving toward some sort of tentative peace, knowing that each balance is forged personally.Now that Mangella has died, taken from us early, I appreciate him. He made a commercial excrescence in "Cold Mountain," but there are elements of his other films that show a delicate soul behind the noise. Here he is himself, directing something he has conceived, and brought into the world.Its a marvel of tension. He has two mothers, each struggling alone with "special" children. Two children who are addicted to gymnastic life beyond what is healthy and reasonable. Tow enterprises to clean the city, one using trees, the other sensitive policing. Two themes of ethnic cleansing.In other words, two haunting worlds that swirl around our focus, the one who draws, creates models, makes photos on a MacBook. This character is played by Jude Law. He's not who I would have chosen to play this man who manages four balancing acts, all connected to each other. I just don't think he is an interesting enough soul to speak to us about these sorts of things. He's basically a child himself in these matters.It almost doesn't matter, because Mangella fills in the void with cinematic ambiguities. There are deleted scenes on this DVD that should, really absolutely have been in the final cut. Why they were not baffles me. Would it lessen the commercial value of the thing? One involves a coworker, a women apparently worth exploring, who Law's character considers. That he backs off makes his subsequent leap all the more forceful.The two women here are played by real actresses. By this I mean that they not only know how to show us what their souls contain, but they have souls worth visiting when (temporarily) so shaped.Binoche may be our most real woman, here moving between a woman and all women. Shes a blessing/ I feel blessed to have known her this way, and blessed that Mingella made the introduction and engagement such.I think you should see this. Its his real legacy.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"Breaking and Entering" is about breaking the shells that separate people and entering their lives. While there, they cause pain and joy to each other, they get engaged - and this is what is required for people to be together. Parallel between social projects and individual lives is director's solution, by example, how these social projects may become real – they must be validated through individual lives of participants. Jude Law needed this role to show his actor's skill – not just good looks – in my estimation he did well. Juliette Binoche, besides being as always adorable, plays role of Serbian Moslem émigré very believably. The rest of characters are supporting and did a good job. Director's work was solid – not brilliant but very professional and credible. Positive: Good cast, deliberate attempt to build a situation that would address a social condition using individual-social metaphor, solid craftsmanship in directorial work. Negative: The ideas are not well develop and too simplistic. The "Breaking and Entering" as a step in overcoming individual alienation is unconvincing. Conclusion: If you wish a food for thought, albeit imperfect, see this film – for me it will always beat "The Dark Knight" (9.2/10) or "Star Wars" (9/10). The rating of 8 was given on the background of everyday's trash produced by Hollywood encouraged by mindless crowds filling movie theaters and elevating ratings for such trash to the astronomical levels - for them Socrates' "An unexamined life is not worth living" has no meaning.