Don't listen to the negative reviews

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The central premise has promise: Single mother Hope (a fine and personable performance by Nadja Brand) gets abducted by a cruel and cunning mysterious man (well played with chilling understatement by Eric Colvin) who holds her captive in a remote woodland camp and tortures her in order to bend the poor lass to his merciless will. While writers/directors Adam Mason and Simon Boyes succeed with creating and sustaining an unwaveringly grim and harsh tone as well as make good use of the beautiful, yet desolate and isolated sylvan setting, they crucially fail to generate much in the way of tension and don't develop the character of Hope thoroughly enough for the viewer to have any actual emotional investment in her miserable plight. Granted, the convincing graphic gore and moments of sadistic violence pack a nasty wallop, but the sluggish pacing, talky script, and generally flat execution make this picture a rather tedious chore to sit through. However, the filmmakers still deserve a few extra points for avoiding the usual teens-in-peril formula, an earnest (if inert) attempt at gritty realism, and, most of all, the genuinely startling and unexpected surprise bummer nihilistic ending. It's just that this movie doesn't have the essential punch or vigor it needs to cook the way that it should. Erik Wilson's stark cinematography provides an appropriately dark and gloomy look. The spare rattling score by Emma Holand and Gavin Miller does the flesh-crawling trick. A strictly so-so flick.

I saw the world premier of this movie about a number of years ago and loved it. I have seen it since and loved it. It is a guilty pleasure as nothing good happens to any of the characters in this movie. It is the type of movie where all the shocks are real. If you enjoyed the book about slavery called Perfect Victim and mixed it with Saw 2 you might get a flavour of this movie. It does not pull its punches and is effectively made.The plot of this movie revolves around Nadja Brand who is the director's wife. They make a good team as he gets a compelling performance out of her. She is seen drinking in a bar and then she wakes up with a noose round her neck, balancing on a log and some bad stitching around her stomach. Later on we see her again and it is here where the movie gets interesting as we find he using all her womanly guile to survive. I do not want to give to much of the plot away.Suffice to say this movie rocks and if you want to see a movie that makes the saw series seem tame, this is it. Also ever wondered what it would be like to have a slave or be a modern day slave?? Watch this movie and all will be revealed. You have to have a strong stomach to see this harrowing classic.

Broken (2006)* (out of 4) Yet another mean-spirited SAW wannabe with this one coming from Britain. In the film a woman (Nadja Brand) goes out on a date and goes to bed but when she wakes up she's inside a coffin. She doesn't know where she is or how she got there but soon she's tied up to a tree where she must rip a razor out of her stomach in order to cut herself down. She's then introduced to the man (Eric Colvin) doing all of this stuff and from here on out it's one torture after another. The SAW movies have had some major ups and downs but I think you can view those films as at least well-written and made but that can't be said about BROKEN as it's one confusing mess that never really adds up to much and in the end it's pretty pointless. The pointless aspect would mean I would have to give a spoiler to the ending, which I won't do here but I'm sure most will came to the same train of thought after sitting through this thing. It's never made clear why the man kidnaps these women unless the only point was for them to grow a garden for him and keep his pots and pans clean. If that was the reason for everything going on then the screenplay is worse than I thought. If the entire point of this movie is to just see the woman tortured then that's simply not good enough. We've seen this type of film so many times that there's nothing fresh or original done here with the exception of the killer constantly being by the victim. There are a couple interesting scenes where he's taking care of her as if he cares but sadly this doesn't last too long and this emotion never comes back. The torture scenes are all rather cheaply done but we do get some special effects and this is especially true during the scene where the women have to remove stitches, dig into themselves and pull the razor out. Most of the other violence is rather bland and really doesn't get too hard to watch. The performances really aren't all that bad with both Brand and Colvin fitting their roles nicely but once again the screenplay really doesn't give them too much to work with. A third character is introduced and is so annoying that you'll be cheering for the killer. BROKEN is yet another entry in the so-called "torture/porn" genre that keeps delivering hit and miss flicks. This one here is certainly a miss and it's the type of film that will keep making you more and more frustrated as it moves along. You sit there watching just to finally get to the point but that point simply never comes.

Broken starts as single mother Hope (producer Nadja Brand) returns home after a date to her young six year old daughter Jennifer (Megan Van Kerro), after making sure Jennifer is alright Hope goes to sleep herself. Suddenly Hope wakes up to find herself in a wooden coffin, a day later a man (Eric Colvin) lets her out but then ties a rope around her neck to a tree & balances her on a log, inside a deep wound in her stomach is a razor blade to cut through the rope & save herself from choking, Hope manages to reach inside her own body to find the blade & cut the rope. After this first test the man then chains her to a tree & makes her clean his pots & pans & tend a little vegetable patch in the middle of a forest, as you would. Hope tries to escape but the man punishes every attempt. Is Jennifer still alive & will Hope be able to find help?This British production was written & directed by Simon Boyes & Adam Mason who also edited it & it's a bit of an odd film, it's supposed to be a stark horror thriller but it just feels like something is missing. Available in the US in both 'R' rated & 'Unrated' cuts I will be basing my comments on the longer version although a few extra gore shots doesn't significantly alter the film overall. Broken is a strange film & hard to categorise, it starts off feeling like a Saw (2004) imitator with a gruesome trap of some sort but then it settles down into a bizarre imprisonment film as this seemingly random man keeps Hope chained to a tree in a forest so she can wash his dirty pans & grow vegetable's for him. Nothing is ever revealed about the man, his name, his origins or why he is doing what he is or how he even managed to kidnap Hope in the first place or why he choose her & the list just goes on. The two barely speak a word to each other & even then it's just short sentences, there's no idle chit-chat here as Hope develops a strong bond with a flower & the opportunity for a conversation with a flower is limited to say the least. You know, to be honest I was sitting there watching Broken & I was just thinking to myself when Hope slashed the back of that guy's leg but he still had her back didn't he realise things were not going to work out? I mean if he wanted a woman to cook & clean for you (who doesn't?) maybe he should try the lonely hearts ads in the local paper, & this time it might not be a bad idea to not actually kidnap & mutilate said woman, you know because that sort of thing generally doesn't help fledgling relationships does it? There's also a strange twist ending which makes little or no sense, why did that guy keep Jennifer in a run down shed? Surely that's an extra mouth to feed? Also when Hope was trying to break the door down why didn't Jennifer say anything? You know something like 'don't open the door mum or you will get a face full of nails' would have been helpful, wouldn't it?Personally I felt the film was lacking something after an OK start & a fairly intriguing premise it goes nowhere & never gives any sort of reason for anything that happens or even where the action takes place. There's a bit of gore but not that much, there's a couple of scenes of people reaching inside stomach wounds, someone pulls some stitches out, there's a broken leg, someones head gets bashed in & a tongue is pulled out which begs the question how do none of these extreme wounds not become infected without proper medical treatment & they quite frankly live like tramps? Considering that Hope has been living wild in the middle of a dirty forest exposed to the elements her white shirt is remarkably clean at the end after forty odd days isn't it? Just off topic for a moment I have no idea why this film is called Broken but a quick IMDb search brings up at least another 38 films with exactly the same title.With a supposed budget of about £500,000 this is well made & has decent production values but I didn't find it scary as much as a little unsettling. Filmed in some wood here in the UK in Cambridge somewhere although it could have been shot anywhere since one tree looks much like another. The acting didn't do much for me & that woman who screamed constantly got on my nerves, sure in that situation in real life you might scream that much but it's no less irritating to have to listen to.Broken is a film that may grip & disturb some but the lack of story or logic behind anything that happens meant I couldn't get into it at all, that's just my opinion so treat it as such but Broken didn't do much for me & ultimately felt a bit pointless.