By Emilio Frenk.
Director: James McTeigue
Cast: Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Ajiona Alexus, Levi Meaden, Seth Carr, Mark Furze, Jason George, Christa Miller and Damien Leake.
Rating: Poor.
James McTeigue, director of “V For Vendetta” brings “Breaking In” a thriller that brings more laughter than thrills and chills.
The movie centers in Shaun Russell (Gabrielle Union) a woman who recently suffered the passing of her father and is travelling with her children Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) and Justin (Jason George) to complete the sell of her father´s house.
Hours later four criminals arrive: Sam (Levi Maeden), Peter (Mark Furze), Duncan (Richard Cabral and their leader Eddie (Billy Burke). They break in and have Shaun´s children hostage until they can open the safe that is in the house that contains $4 million dollars in it.
Now Shaun will do everything in her power to protect her children from the criminals and will do it any cost, even if it means to fight against them.
The reason why I mentioned previously that “Breaking In” had moments that were more laughable than real was due to it´s poor screenplay written by Ryan Engle, who´s body of work include movies like “Non-Stop”, “The Commuter” and “Rampage”.
The characters of the film they are not that rich enough and I feel that the movie was a carbon copy of David Fincher´s “Panic Room”, which is ten times much better than this film.
The main villain in Eddie played by Billy Burke I saw him most of the time with a stiff expression in his face and a villain for a movie of this caliber needs to be someone who wants to perform a score. I have mentioned here that you need to have an interesting villain in this film to make it work and here was not the case.
Gabrielle Union did a decent job in her performance; you can tell that she did what she could to deliver but when poor material is involved there is nothing you can do no matter how hard you try.
I was surprised with James McTeigue who directed a great movie in “V For Vendetta” and I think he shown in the past that he knows how to direct this kind of film but here it was not the case.
His direction was not as good and the performance of the cast, specially the villains was totally unconvincing.
Another issue that I had with the movie was from the opening sequence that is in slow motion and it we don´t see the main character. I did not understand why it had to be that way when you can shoot that sequence in a normal speed
The amount of flashbacks that were used in this film were completely unnecessary and I feel that there was a lot of over explaining in this film when at some point we are understanding the plot of the film.
Regardless of the genre it is good to show some backstory but here the problem is that we see a lot of it to the point that we don´t care about the film anymore.
I had some issues with the editing in this film where some of the shots were not as good and some cuts that were too fast between transitions.
I do enjoy a thriller but here the problem like I mentioned came straight from a writing point and with mediocre writing like was shown in here the chances for failure are going to be very high.
I did see potential in this film but it needed more work. If that would have been invested maybe we would have seen a different product.
That being said “Breaking In” is one of the most ridiculous movies I´ve seen from the genre and I cannot recommend it.