Breaking In (2018) [Blu-ray]
Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller

A woman fights to protect her family during a home invasion. Next Mother's Day, Gabrielle Union stars as a woman who will stop at nothing to rescue her two children being held hostage in a house designed with impenetrable security. No trap, no trick and especially no man inside can match a mother with a mission when she is determined on Breaking In.

Storyline: After her father Isaac's murder, Shaun Russell travels to the house she grew up in with her two children, daughter Jasmine and son Glover. Shaun intends to settle her father's estate and sell the remotely-located house, which has multiple security features, including a hand-held remote monitor. The security system is off-line at their arrival, but is soon reactivated by Jasmine. Unknown to the family, four criminals - Peter, Sam, Duncan, and their leader Eddie - are already in the house. Jasmine and Glover are taken hostage while Shaun is outside. Peter chases Shaun into the woods, where she manages to knock him unconscious. She leaves him bound and gagged, and uses the intercom to call the house. Eddie tells her they only came for the safe and the $4 million they believe is inside; Isaac was under investigation and Sam had learned that he liquidated his assets. The crew has only 90 minutes from when they cut the phone line before the security company will contact police, so they want to find it and leave quickly. Concealed in the trees, Shaun sees Maggie, the Realtor, arrive with paperwork for the house sale. Eddie greets her at the door, explaining Shaun had gone into town briefly, and invites her in. Maggie notices Shaun's purse on the table behind Eddie and declines. As Maggie is leaving, Duncan attacks and slits her throat, which upsets Eddie, as it means Shaun won't be as controllable.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, July 26, 2018 Breaking In whittles the "home invasion" sub-genre down to its most bare, simplistic essentials. Picture a parent desperate to save her children and a handful of bad guys who are not necessarily over their heads but who struggle to improvise when mom becomes supermom with no qualms about doing whatever it takes to save her family. The film's twist, if it can even be described as such, is that mom gets caught outside the house while the kids are locked inside with the bad guys, and hence the title: she's forced to find a way into an impenetrable mansion. But that's really no reason to think the movie has anything of value to offer. Director James McTeigue, who helmed the popular V for Vendetta, crafts the film competently but does nothing to enhance a script that's made of cobbled-together genre nuts-and-bolts that altogether deliver a perfectly serviceable, but wholly forgettable, picture.

Shaun Russell (Gabrielle Union) is a mother of two -- son Glover (Seth Carr) and daughter Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) -- whose wealthy father has just passed away. She and her kids are taking an impromptu trip to his secluded, high dollar Wisconsin estate to begin the process of selling it off. They arrive to find a few oddities, including the home's security system reporting an error. The family largely brushes it off, but when night falls, four men enter the home in search of a safe full of cash. Shaun finds herself trapped outside with one of the assailants while the other three are locked inside the house with the kids. The intruders have only 90 minutes to find the stash until the security system alerts the police. With time ticking away and Shaun interfering with their plans as best she can from the outside, a dangerous game develops with lives and riches both hanging in the balance.

Words like "stale," "generic," and "recycled" appeared throughout the notes written while watching the movie. And they're perfect descriptors. It's not that Breaking In is awful. It's competently put together, and even as it's so rote and repetitive and despite its failure to prove unique or engaging, it's adequately photographed, edited, scored, and acted. But none of these qualities rise above expectation or do anything to improve on the movie, but at its most baseline presentation the movie satisfies core requirements. Just like the story. Expect the usual character notes and various plot devices that are setup ahead of time (such as Glover's use of a drone indoors) to conveniently help the characters along there way once the home invasion is underway. Resultantly, the movie's twists and turns hardly come with any surprise, and even without telegraphing many of them the film is so reliant on stock actions and characterizations and is so risk averse and unwilling to push boundaries or even try to surprise the audience that the end resolution is known before the movie even begins to play.

None of the actors accomplish anything of value, each failing to elevate admittedly everyday sorts of characters in an everyday sort of Thriller to any kind of interesting perspective. The reliable Union turns in a competent performance. She doesn't struggle with the material because it absolutely fails to stretch her as an actress, but she fills in the shoes well enough, finding that desperate and increasingly intense edge as a mother on the outside looking in on her endangered children and the men who would do them harm for a quick and, they thought, easy payday. The kids are fine and, of all the actors in the film, accomplish the most with the characters, finding just the right balance between frightened, bold, smart, and savvy as they work their own angles in the house, as limited as they may be. The roster of villains is entirely replaceable, as are the actors; both are entirely forgettable and serve as nothing more than stand-ins for Union to verbally and ultimately physically battle in and around the house. Even said house, for its remote location and high dollar furnishings, fails to become a character; it never elevates above the level of a generic setting that's spacious enough to keep things modestly interesting but the filmmakers otherwise fail to really take advantage of it.

Assumptions are never a good bet and judging a movie by its cover and summary can mean missing on some gems, but Breaking In lives up (or down) to all of the assumptions one can make of its marketed presentation. It's a flat movie with no redeeming value. It's well put together from a baseline technical perspective but it's stale and takes no risks; one can count on the movie following the Thriller playbook to a fault. Universal's Blu-ray features excellent video, stable audio, and a nice little array of bonus content. Rent it.

[CSW] -1.8- The acting was good, the cinematography was good, the pacing was good, but the plot line sank the otherwise good movie. Although the story line was supposed to keep us focused on cheering for mom to save the day, too many of the parts did not fit together as they should. Come on-state of the art system with no direct alarm when phone lines are cut or panic buttons anywhere? Husband takes a couple of hits and goes down for the count! Did everyone forget the daughter's cell phone? We are supposed to believe that most of what she did was in the realm of "I could do that... maybe!" which was supposed to make it appealing. She grew up in that house but never used her knowledge of the house, with the exception of the safe, or the surrounding area to full advantage. Tying her down to just what a stranger to the house or property would do was a complete disservice to the action and made the plot line far too unbelievable.
[V4.5-A3.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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