Breaking and Entering
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: December 15, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
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 full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
One of the more intelligent, better-made new movies around right now, but, despite everything, it doesn't really connect with the nerves and heart. It's a romance without anguish, although the pain of love is really what it's all about. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
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 full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The movie has a gentle, bemused intelligence, the tone of British liberalism at its most open-minded. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Juliette Binoche won an Oscar for her role in Anthony Minghella's adaptation of "The English Patient", but in many ways I prefer her soulful performance here: portraying a Bosnian Muslim working as a tailor in London, she's reason enough to see Minghella's overcontrived though absorbing 2006 feature based on his original script. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's nicely crafted, respectably acted and often quite compelling in a low-key way, but it doesn't have the kind of flair, impact or resonance we've come to expect from the director. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
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 full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The story is complex enough to be absorbing, but its pedantic quality makes it -- and its lessons -- all too easy to forget. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
There's a great deal of potential here, but like Will, Minghella loses his bearings whenever he wanders too far from home. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Breaking and Entering is smart and smartly done, as it describes these inter-circling worlds - the well-to-do Brits and the newly deposited foreigners, trying to shake off their homeland tragedies and start anew. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Breaking and Entering is a bourgeois movie full of bourgeois problems presented bourgeoisly. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Minghella is a smart guy with splendid intentions but, ultimately, he's a victim here of his own liberal contrivances. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
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 full review
60
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Bold in scope and aptly mimicking the loose structures of kinship, friendship and work most city dwellers make do with these days, Breaking and Entering nonetheless plays out too quiet and too loose for its own good. Read full review
60
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
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 full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
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 full review
58
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Strip off the superfluities, and it's a chamber play about people with nothing in common talking about what, at their core, they have in common. A film meant to remind us of our shared humanity mainly unites us in frustration with its thick, gummy progress. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
There's no shortage of candidates for the fatal flaw: the artificial storyline; the presence of a ridiculously cliched character; the lack of chemistry between illicit lovers. Blaming one of these problems is probably unfair. The movie's failure is likely based on a fusion of all these, and perhaps a few others. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Corliss/Richard Schickel
The film is handsomely mounted and well played (particularly by the always magical Binoche--such a wonderfully alert actress), but somehow it never draws one into its schemes. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
This is an ambitious midlife-crisis movie that valiantly weaves together big themes, among them the nagging guilt of the successful, wealthy artist. Read full review
50
Village VoiceNathan Lee
Forgive Minghella for taking a breather, even if Breaking and Entering exhales nothing but hot air. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Though Binoche does very solid work, she can't sell the idea of her and Law as a couple; the chemistry isn't there. Not much else rings true in Minghella's screenplay, which is full of coincidences and speeches about race and class. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Breaking and Entering is so bloodless that even Minghella's best ideas come off as wan and pale. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Breaking and Entering starts out powerfully, then falls apart by the time it reaches its too-neat conclusion. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The story, like the protagonist, floats along in a noodly sort of way, intelligent, benign and ineffectual. Read full review
40
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
What saves Breaking and Entering from foundering altogether in earnest self-regard is Mr. Minghella's evident affection for London, a city of inexhaustible architectural and human variety. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Starts busily, and soon becomes a bafflement -- such an interesting cast, such technical excellence, so many intricate details and parallel plot threads, yet so little clarity or urgency.
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