You could do a lot worse than watching Gabrielle Union kicking ass and taking names for an hour and a half. The filmmakers also could have done a lot better.
After the untimely death of her estranged father (who is, in the first scene, suddenly murdered), Shaun brings her two children to his gorgeous rural mansion. We learn a bit about his life and her childhood before we see that the house is a fortress with reinforced windows and an extensive security system. Why? It doesn't take long before we find out, as thieves infiltrate the house looking for a safe.
Thankfully, despite their brutality, the thieves are not totally competent, nor are they all on the same page. They botch corralling the family and so, while they have the children locked inside with them, Shaun is left to her own devices outside. As their leader (Billy Burke) notes, this is a problem. Fear they can handle. Desperation, however, is completely out of their hands.
I have an incredible weakness for home invasion thrillers. Even the worst of the genre I'd prefer to watch over almost anything else, any day. There's something deeply disturbing to me about a home becoming a war zone. I also think these films can be super subversive in portrayals of domesticity, gender norms, violence, and those "what if", prepare-for-everything debates. And while Breaking In is by no means the most effective example of this genre, it provides just enough novelty to keep things interesting.
Novelty? In a movie that clearly rips off everything from Trespass to Panic Room and When a Stranger Calls? Well, sure. It normalizes black families on screen in a genre that often relegates people of color to villainous or victimized roles. It celebrates the strength, intelligence, and resourcefulness of a powerful black woman. And, of course, as the title suggests, the movie is less about breaking out of domestic constraints (as is so often the case in this genre) than it is about reclaiming stolen and violated territory.
All that's not to say the film isn't without its problems. Richard Cabral plays one of the thieves with chilling skill (he's a really effective bad guy), but it's unfortunate that the only Latino character is also the most brutal and treacherous. Billy Burke as the leader is just boring; this blame may be shared with the writer, as the characters are all incredibly flat. And director James McTeigue, who displayed such stylized aesthetic in V for Vendetta and The Raven, is here mostly just going through the motions of thriller traditions without imbuing his film with any inspired vision. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I couldn't help but wonder why he chose this story to tell, and why he didn't add any flair of his own design.
IMDb: Breaking In
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