ShangLuda Admirable film.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Desertman84 Breaking and Entering is a romantic drama film that stars Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, and Robin Wright Penn. Set in a blighted, inner-city neighborhood of London, the film is about a successful landscape architect whose dealings with a young thief and his mother cause him to re-evaluate his life.It was written and directed by Anthony Minghella.Will Francis is a successful landscape architect who runs an upscale business with his friend Sandy in the King's Cross section of London, a neighborhood that has long been plagued by crime and poverty but has lately become the target of a major gentrification program. Will's longtime girlfriend is Liv, a lovely woman troubled by a lack of communication between herself and her husband and emotional problems with their teenage daughter, Bea, who can't sleep and is obsessed with gymnastics. A thief has broken into Will and Sandy's office not once but twice, taking Will's laptop and the company's computer equipment, and Will begins spending his evenings at the shop in hopes of catching the culprit in action. The burglar strikes a third time, and while giving chase, Will sees him make his way into a shabby apartment building. Will learns the criminal is Miro, a 15-year-old refugee from Bosnia. Without revealing what he knows, Will makes the acquaintance of Amira, Miro's widowed mother -- a Bosnian refugee who makes a living as a seamstress. As Will starts bringing Amira business on a regular basis, the two begin an affair which continues even as Will maintains his relationship with Liv. The complicated interactions involving class and culture that ensue between all these characters remain fascinating despite the fact that this film feels contrived and superficial.Unfortunately,characters don't act logically as the screenplay manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.Overall,not all parts of the script are equally well-developed and it leaves us too chilly to care.

paul2001sw-1 Anthony Minghella's 'Breaking and Entering' tells the story of the lives and loves of a group of north Londoners; but I found it an underwhelming affair. Neither Jude Law's flat male lead, nor Robin Wright-Penn's neurotic female one, attracted my sympathy; and the film as a whole had a soft-focus, idealised feel to it, with heavy use of an emotional soundtrack to underscore dialogue that doesn't always justify the treatment, and a story of a love triangle which magically ends with everyone getting what they really want. A certain housing estate in north London features as a backdrop, one you may have seen before in other films: is it really the only architecturally interesting estate in the city? But this is not such an interesting film.

Amita Deb Like most other people commenting here, I had watched many of Anthony Minghella movies before watching this one. So I started with great expectations and watched it carefully.It is an intense drama and grips you till the end. Good, compact storyline. The casts did an amazing job. Juliet Binoche displayed one of her best performances. Excellent camera work. These are the things on the surface.On a deeper level, the strength in the portrayal of human emotions depicted in the characters is the biggest success of the movie. Characters are multi-faceted, and like regular human beings full of contradictions and even plain-faced lies and yet in the core of their hearts is the ray of human love. The end of the movie made me a little emotional reflecting that this is how we are the humans.A great movie and I would recommend it.

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.