secondtake Breaking and Entering (2006)Underrated. The acting is so good, and the story so interesting and not quite familiar (even if it uses some familiar ideas), and the way it is filmed and told so expert, it's hard to see why there aren't more people appreciating this. I really liked it, and was never distracted and disappointed.First there is Jude Law, a nuanced actor who rises above his reputation as a pretty man. He manages to come off as a self-absorbed jerk with a nice interior, then as a truly good man, then as a tortured adulterer. And some things between, all restrained and quite believable in a proper, well-educated London scene. Against him and even more astonishing (as usual) is Juliette Binoche, playing a Bosnian immigrant with a troubled son. Binoche's accent, to an American ear, and her mannerisms were so real I had to look her up to see if she really was born and raised in France (she was, in Paris, though her mother came from Poland). It is the troubled son who connects the two. Add a troubled marriage that Law's character has with a neurotic but striving wife (Robin Penn Wright) and their own daughter and her autistic tendencies, and you have a complicated world. And it takes a director like the also underrated Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient"), who made only eight movies before his early death, to make sense of this without pandering to sensation. And keeping it visually beautiful.There are flaws here, partly in the writing (also Minghella's hand), adding elements that seem a bit forced (the "good" prostitute, for example). And perhaps even the end, which is beautiful and idealistic and dramatic but a hair sudden after all, needed a different tilt. But in all there is psychology and sentiment and narrative twisting enough for any solid contemporary movie. It still resonates, even a decade later. So why the lack of appreciation? My first guess is that it isn't flashy, it never goes over any edge. You might say it takes no chances. But if you like a really well made drama for what it is, this is one to try.

jiaojiao_wang I watched this film for Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Penn, without knowing it was a Anthony Minghella film. Afterwards I thought how typical this was of a Minghella film - beautiful cinematography - especially some mirror and reflection shots and the filtering of colours, and some shots equal that of Hitchcock - two things, two situations happening at once. It had beautiful music - by the same composer who composed for The English Patient and Cold Mountain, Gabriel Yared. Yet it is an unrealistic story.I loved the film knowing that the story was implausible. I mean, think about it, which man would fall in love with his office cleaner? What man wouldn't prosecute someone who stole his whole company's computers and his personal one, not once, but twice? And what women would take a man back who have cheated on him? Yes, he loved her, and yes, he felt shut out of his own girlfriend's world but he still cheated, I doubt their relationship can last much longer. But, you feel sympathy for each of the characters. Each are flawed, each have difficulties to deal with, whether family, history, or immigration, or loneliness, or poverty. You know that it's a film and their behaviours are not what you expect in real life, but that is what I love about it. It is unpredictable, not like ordinary Hollywood films - which I don't usually like. I thought not only the acting was really moving and invoked much sympathy, but it had shown areas of London, that I, a Londoner, had not seen before. Also, despite much sadness this film also gave lots of laughter, which was great. I thought Jude Law and Juliette Binoche were exceptionally good in this, and Bea and the policeman. Penn and the son were less moving or less powerful characters. I actually love the metaphors and the fox, the prostitute, as well as the jumping and running over walls, and the changing of London, reconstruction - linked with the reconstruction of Bosnia, and the references to the war. I personally think that the Bosnian/Yugoslavian war is generally unknown to the world, it happened during the same time of the end of Apartheid but yet people do not know the suffering behind it, nor the stories behind it. I hope this film can have an educating impact on the audience, who may wish to research about the war afterwards. If you like this film, you should also consider watching In My Country - with Juliette Binoche, and she plays a journalist whom report about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I thought it was such a moving and shattering film and Binoche was simply brilliant! She then has a Afrikaans accent!

badajoz-1 I do not like to speak ill of the dead (except Hitler and Stalin) but this awful, awful film showed that Anthony Minghella's career was on the slide when he unfortunately passed away. Not that I have liked any of his previous efforts - Truly, Madly, Deeply was an unbelievable bad joke, English Patient overblown with repellent characters, Cold Mountain a waste of space and ridiculously portentous after the big explosion! This though is an attempt at a noughties art-house cross between Antonioni and Bergman that is boring, artificial with again totally uninteresting characters. Jude Law cannot open a film (he just repeats his Closer persona who is looking for love but cannot stop sha***** other women), Robin Wright Penn is a moody Swede going nowhere who is a double of Ulrika Jonsson! Juliette Binoche is prepared to get her kit off to blackmail and not look too good in the nude - brave but irrelevant!And how can you go with a script where the hero talks to his dysfunctional step daughter about communicating to each other in metaphors!! An original screenplay that sounds and looks like a stage play! Possibly the worst and most unprofessional aspect of this movie is the absolutely awful quality of the lypsynching! Give it a miss - theatre audiences obviously did!

tedg Gosh. Here's a film that not only went directly to video, but horror of horrors, it was directly to Blockbuster.And yet it is precisely in the center of one of the six nodes of film perfection. Its that place where cinematic qualities recede and theatrical drama of the Chekov variety is delivered: should in conflict; souls in pain; souls striving toward some sort of tentative peace, knowing that each balance is forged personally.Now that Mangella has died, taken from us early, I appreciate him. He made a commercial excrescence in "Cold Mountain," but there are elements of his other films that show a delicate soul behind the noise. Here he is himself, directing something he has conceived, and brought into the world.Its a marvel of tension. He has two mothers, each struggling alone with "special" children. Two children who are addicted to gymnastic life beyond what is healthy and reasonable. Tow enterprises to clean the city, one using trees, the other sensitive policing. Two themes of ethnic cleansing.In other words, two haunting worlds that swirl around our focus, the one who draws, creates models, makes photos on a MacBook. This character is played by Jude Law. He's not who I would have chosen to play this man who manages four balancing acts, all connected to each other. I just don't think he is an interesting enough soul to speak to us about these sorts of things. He's basically a child himself in these matters.It almost doesn't matter, because Mangella fills in the void with cinematic ambiguities. There are deleted scenes on this DVD that should, really absolutely have been in the final cut. Why they were not baffles me. Would it lessen the commercial value of the thing? One involves a coworker, a women apparently worth exploring, who Law's character considers. That he backs off makes his subsequent leap all the more forceful.The two women here are played by real actresses. By this I mean that they not only know how to show us what their souls contain, but they have souls worth visiting when (temporarily) so shaped.Binoche may be our most real woman, here moving between a woman and all women. Shes a blessing/ I feel blessed to have known her this way, and blessed that Mingella made the introduction and engagement such.I think you should see this. Its his real legacy.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.