Payback is a Mother
James McTeigue directed “Breaking In” starring Gabrielle Union as Shaun Russel, a housewife and a mother of 2 children. Billy Burke portrayed the character of Eddie, the main villain of the film. The film managed to earn US$ 51 million at the box-office with a budget of US$6 million. James McTeigue is well known for directing movies like V for Vendetta, Ninja assassin, The Raven, and Survivor.
The story of the film is pretty straight forward; Shaun’s father is murdered and she travels back to the house she grew up in with her 2 kids – Jasmine and Glover. Shaun intends to settle her father’s estate and sell her father’s remotely located house. The house features several state of the art security systems controlled by a hand-held device. When Shaun reaches the house she finds out that there are 4 criminals in the house looking for a safe which presumably contains $4 million. Jasmine and Glover are taken as hostage inside the house while Shaun is outside. Shaun executes several rescue attempts; as a mother she will go to any lengths to save her children from the criminals.
Gabrielle Union’s performance as a desperate mother seemed quite believable to me. The element of action and thriller in the movie was good. The story lacked balance and continuity, the element of suspense was not good and the story seemed flat and predictable. Breaking In did not feature proper backstories, motivations or development of characters, we are mostly kept in the dark about Shaun, her father and the 4 criminals. There is a long list of plot deficiencies in the film which cannot be proved by any logic or reasoning. For example, 1] Shaun’s father was a criminal and as per the legal system his assets should have been frozen. 2] In one scene Shaun critically injures one of the criminal with a vehicle but in the next scene the criminal is seen chasing Shaun without any visible injuries to his body. 3] Shaun is a housewife with no police, military or self-defense training but still easily she manages to defeat 4 armed criminals. These kinds of plot scenes were really hard to believe and couldn’t be explained with any reasoning.
While I watched the film it seemed to me like Shaun was a single mother, divorced or separated, but at the end of the film we are (surprisingly) informed that she has a husband. Talking about the villains of the movie, the 4 criminals did not appear to me as they were the villains of the movie. Their acting did not have any flair and their dialogues did not make them seem like dangerous criminals. The heroine, Shaun was portrayed as dominant force overpowering the villains. The story could have been better if there was some sort of a balance created between the forces of good (Shaun) and evil (4 villains). I would have to conclude that Breaking In did not impress me and it is the worst movie of James McTeigue’s career as a director.
Directed by James McTeigue
Produced by Gabrielle Union, James Lopez, Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Will Packer
Screenplay by Ryan Engle
Story by Jaime Primak Sullivan
Music by Johnny Klimek
Cinematography by Toby Oliver
Edited by Joseph Jett Sally
Starring
Gabrielle Union as Shaun Russell
Billy Burke as Eddie
Levi Meaden as Sam
Ajiona Alexus as Jasmine
Richard Cabral as Duncan
Budget: $6 million
Box office business: $51 million
Release Date: May 11, 2018 (cinemas), August 7, 2018 (DVD/Blu-ray)
Running time: 88 minutes
Genre: Thriller