Breaking In

Directed by: James McTeigue
Written by: Ryan Engle, Jamie Primack Sullivan
Cast: Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke, Ajiona Alexus

Plot

Breaking In is a very well paced film. It begins with a shocking moment that had the whole theater gasping. Which means this scene did its job. Then it cuts to our lead family bonding during a car ride to the house of Shuan Russell’s grandfather. The film is very quick to get to the point, and almost ten minutes into the movie, the criminals are exposed and the family is held hostage.

Throughout the rest of the movie, both Shaun and her kids have tense moments and none of it seems like wasted time or failed attempt after failed attempt to escape. The movie begins to lag in its climax, but the ending twist will have you forgetting all about that ten mins of bad pacing.

Characters

The film stars Billy Burke as the lead criminal, Eddie. He plays a very convincing character, but his role is also played out in films of this nature. He plays the typical “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t do as I say I will” bad guy. Then there is Richard Cabral as Duncan. He is the criminal who is happy to kill anyone. While his character’s trigger happy tendencies get annoying, he adds much needed tension to the film and his scenes play out nicely.

The final two criminals are played by Levi Meaden and Mark Furze. Their characters are the bad guys who follow orders but don’t want anyone to get hurt. Then we have the Russell family. Shaun is played by Gabrielle Union. Her character is amazingly ingenuitive and quickly finds ways to thwart the criminals’ plans. Her performance helps sell the film as a fun cat and mouse game.

Then there is Ajiona Alexus and Seth Carr as Jasmine and Glover Russell. They play the children of Shaun. It’s typical for the kids to play the characters in distress, which they certainly are for a majority of the film, but they have their moments and make you hope their characters make it out unscathed.

Overall

In the end, I left the film enjoying myself. There are two issues I had with this film. The first is the characters were a little too typical and cliche. The second is the sound.

I’m not sure if it was my theater or the movie overall, but it was so silent and the background music played so low it almost became awkward. Aside from those two aspects Breaking In is a solid film. It is exactly as advertised. A suspense film about a mother battling criminals to get her kids back. If you expect anything more or anything less you probably shouldn’t. It might ruin your experience.