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Breaking and Entering (2006)

tomatometer

33

Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 125
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 84

This class warfare drama feels contrived and superficial: characters don't act logically as the movie manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.

29

Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 38
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 27

This class warfare drama feels contrived and superficial: characters don't act logically as the movie manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.

audience

52

liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 56,304

My Rating

Movie Info

A petty thief is the link between a well-to-do businessman and a single mother struggling to get by in his edgy, emotional drama. Will Francis (Jude Law) is a successful landscape architect who runs an upscale business with his friend Sandy (Martin Freeman) in the King's Cross section of London, a neighborhood that has long been plagued by crime and poverty but has lately become the target of a major gentrification program. Will's longtime girlfriend is Liv (Robin Wright Penn), a lovely woman

R, 1 hr. 58 min.

Drama

May 8, 2007

$0.9M

The Weinstein Company

Cast

All Critics (131) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (87) | DVD (15)

The complicated interactions involving class and culture that ensue between all these characters remain fascinating even when they seem overly schematic.

March 18, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Though Binoche does very solid work, she can't sell the idea of her and Law as a couple; the chemistry isn't there. Not much else rings true in Minghella's screenplay, which is full of coincidences and speeches about race and class.

August 22, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comment
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Despite its arty construction and clever dialogue, Breaking and Entering leaves us too chilly to care.

March 2, 2007 Full Review Source: Denver Post | Comment
Denver Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Breaking and Entering offers a kinder, gentler version of London's strife than we're accustomed to seeing. Not all parts of the script are equally well-developed, and sometimes it seems as if we're looking at drama under glass.

March 2, 2007 Comment
Denver Rocky Mountain News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As with all of Minghella's films, there's intelligence and texture and depth and feeling, though here the emotions can seem frostbitten. Perhaps the first thing that wasn't working and needed to be fully broken to heal was the script.

March 1, 2007 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Maybe Jude Law should take some time off from acting. Maybe Juliette Binoche should get a new dialect coach. Maybe Anthony Minghella should try writing a movie ending that doesn't make everybody groan.

February 16, 2007 Full Review Source: Toronto Star | Comment
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

One-hundred percent uncut bourgeois fantasy

August 27, 2009 Full Review Source: CinePassion | Comment
CinePassion

Though intricately plotted and well acted, Minghella's characters feel more like symbols than flesh-and-blood characters, and their travails seem designed to illustrate a lecture about privilege, injustice, cultural stereotypes and bourgeois complacency.

March 18, 2008 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Insightful, contemporary love story for adults.

October 22, 2007 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comment
Common Sense Media

Class friction and the ensuing cinema of paranoia evidence of the growing class divide on screen

June 21, 2007 Full Review Source: WBAI Web Radio | Comment
WBAI Web Radio

Everything in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering is torn and in need of mending....And like the flaw's set within the confines of the film, the movie itself is in need of a little tinkering itself.

May 27, 2007 Full Review Source: Movie Views | Comment

One of the most overlooked films of the last year is finally out on DVD

May 10, 2007 Full Review Source: Movie Habit | Comment
Movie Habit

... takes place in a metaphorical world of stunningly beautiful people where every human failing and dramatic action reverberates with symbolic significance.

May 9, 2007 Full Review Source: MSN.com | Comment
MSN.com

The pitch meeting must have been frightening: "Caché for fans of Chocolat."

May 4, 2007 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

A messy yet occasionally affecting drama.

April 18, 2007 Full Review Source: Creative Loafing | Comment
Creative Loafing

Un drama urbano muy contemporáneo que explora superficialmente ciertas realidades sociales, pero que presta más atención a las crisis domésticas de sus personajes. Podría haber sido mucho más interesante.

April 6, 2007 Full Review Source: Uruguay Total | Comment
Uruguay Total
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Breaking and Entering

Minghella has to do with a very undefined and illogical screenplay that makes it all feel distant and the director still manages to bring to the screen some very nice and emotional moments. This is not a disaster, but surely could have been without Minghella's sensitive touch and the good cast.

May 28, 2008
emilebond007

Super Reviewer

There was just too much going on to know what was the REAL story being told. The build up is way too slow because where the movie ends, to me, is where the story really had potential. To me the "thief" is the story, but it is lost with all the unnecessary scenes in bathtubs! Does it require acting for Jude Law to

September 2, 2010
Tomassgringo

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Breaking and Entering (2007) (DE)
  • Breaking & Entering (UK)
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