Breaking in Film Review

Breaking In film review - New release May 2018 Rating - 1/10

‘Payback is a mother’ As stated on the promotional poster for the new film Breaking In, staring Gabriella Union and Ajiona Alexus. The film is directed by James McTeigue, him of V for Vendetta fame, amongst a whole host of his other works including multiple Netflix offerings. He’s also been assistant director on films such as The Matrix trilogy and Star Wars! With all that taken into account, we should expect big things from Breaking In! Which was also cleverly released to coincide with Mother’s Day, an excellent idea to ramp up box office sales.

The film starts off with great intrigue, in the very opening scenes it sets itself up for something truly amazing. A man seen leaving his posh apartment and going for a jog, the events that followed this led me to believe that this film was going to be something unforgettable, unpredictable and original. I had that feeling when I watched the opening scenes, that it was going to be – one of those films. One of those films that I love, that at each turn you’ve no idea what’s coming next or what will happen in the end, plot twists and turns, you name it. These films often have a sinister dark overtone whilst building the suspense to just the right level to always keep the viewer guessing, until all is revealed. A film like this is an absolute joy to watch, and for a moment on Friday night, I thought I was in the company of such a film. Alas only for a moment until excitement turned into confusion and resignation. I had that deflated feeling as I sat watching.

Despite the interesting opening, the film then rattles along like a low sounding long fart or a car with one flat tire, and one other tire missing completely. It turns into a predictable, seen that in another film a million times before, ramble, that at 88 minutes is still too long for this all too boring a ride.

The script felt as if it had been written as they were filming by someone who has only ever seen one film in their life before, super flimsy characters who could have been so much more, trying to do something that wasn’t at all well planned out and was just far too obvious. In the end, we get people running around a house and the garden chaotically in pursuit of one another or trying to escape capture from each other. With one of the bad guys seemingly having no idea what was actually going on, he wasn’t the only one! If you’re going to try to commit a house robbery, you’d better be all in, and well prepared, but unfortunately our group of baddies are neither!

It has very slight echoes of the epic 2002 Jodie Foster movie – Panic Room, but it never ever comes anywhere near close to scaling the heights of that classic film, which was cleverly thought out and had characters you could understand, as well as real suspense that you could actually feel. It gripped you in all the ways that Breaking In doesn’t.

The script just didn’t do justice to Gabriella Union’s towering performance as Shaun, a mother on a mission to take out the bad guys, all 4 of them. We wonder from her first violent grappling with an intruder if she has some special training or some secret that we don’t yet know about, but the film doesn’t ever divulge this.

Ajiona Alexus also puts in a good performance along with Seth Carr playing the two kids trapped in this mess of a film.

The man in the opening scenes was the father of Shaun, again we get brief hints at his life to suggest he was under investigation by the DA and was a career criminal but that’s the problem with this whole film. It failed to get deep enough into any of the characters or the storyline itself to really ever mean anything. After watching the viewer is left with a feeling of dissatisfaction that they’ve watched a half film with not enough learnt about the characters individually and you’re left with a yearning for wanting more, more knowledge about each and every one in the film and the surrounding story. You know when you’ve watched a complete film, something that gives you all the answers that you need and maybe leaves you guessing bits but not massive whole chunks like BI. The film leaves you hungry and thirsty and wanting more but not more of the same vague characters and story but something far more developed than an idea that looks as if it was filmed from writing on a napkin. If you were to watch this film a hundred times over, you’d still never get the answers or the film you hoped you’d seen, or the film that could have been, with a bit more effort creatively all round to match the lead cast’s stellar performances, against all odds.

Billy Burke’s criminal mastermind, Eddie is also a massive chance to pull the film together, but his efforts too are wasted. Billy’s outstanding talents as an actor are clearly on show here and he’s certainly a strong enough and convincing gang leader, but he’s let down massively by an epically poor script and the nondescript characters around him.

A promising start that turned into something very clichéd (it even had someone coming back to life after being well and truly run over!), with all the ingredients the film had including the extremely hi tech house with gadgets that could have been put to better use like a flying drone, a control room of cameras including heat detecting and every other expensive household gadget you could think of, to support the story more, but in the end it would have taken a much more powerful script to turn this flick from a raging dud into a positive delight.

The comedy, what little there is, is pretty muted and doesn’t really work. Actually, the film would have worked better as an out and out comedy, really capitalizing on the confusion surrounding the characters and situation, milking it for all it’s worth. Then I may have been reviewing a very different movie, one that entertained and didn’t suck the joy out of the room!

So, payback is a mother, yes and so is an underdeveloped, unoriginal script with characters as hollow as the house they are inhabiting!

One to avoid but look out for the awesome Gabriella Union, Ajiona Alexus and Billy Burke in future pictures!

Watch instead – Panic Room.