Breaking and Entering (2006) Critic Reviews

After being strapped down by a run of elegant, high-class literary adaptations--"The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," and "Cold Mountain"--writer-director Anthony Minghella liberates himself in Breaking And Entering, his first wholly original screenplay since his piercing, minor-key debut feature "Truly, Madly, Deeply."Read the full review

Despite very good performances and solid construction, it's a slightly too symmetrical, way too tendentious side-by-side comparison of two families -- Haves, meet the Have-nots -- who come into unlikely contact in the fitfully gentrifying area of Kings Cross.Read the full review

The actors, especially Binoche, do their damnedest to bring urgency to their roles. But despite Minghella's admirable attempt to tackle major themes on an intimate scale, the film goes down like weak tea. There's no kick in it.Read the full review

Breaking and Entering is a bourgeois movie full of bourgeois problems presented bourgeoisly.Read the full review

For all its contrivances, Breaking and Entering has its finger on the pulse of contemporary London life and possesses its share of fleeting delights, chief among them the sublime Robin Wright Penn as Law's live-in girlfriend.Read the full review

Entirely respectable in every way, it nonetheless has a very cool body temperature and thus likely will inspire polite admiration rather than excitement among viewers.Read the full review

However admirably Minghella urges a break from complacency and an entry into a state of local/global compassion, his characters are position holders rather than people.Read the full review

Breaking and Entering starts out powerfully, then falls apart by the time it reaches its too-neat conclusion.Read the full review

The story, like the protagonist, floats along in a noodly sort of way, intelligent, benign and ineffectual.Read the full review