Breaking and Entering (Blu-ray) (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer Audio Commentary-Director Anthony Minghella Featurette-Making Of Deleted Scenes Gallery-Highlights - Movie Showcase
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	119:00
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Anthony Minghella
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Jude Law Juliette Binoche Robin Wright Penn Martin Freeman Ray Winstone Vera Farmiga Rafi Gavron Poppy Rogers Mark Benton Juliet Stevenson Caroline Chikezie Rad Lazar Ed Westwick
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Karl Hyde Rick Smith Gabriel Yared

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	No Audio Data available for this title
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    It has been 17 long years since British director Anthony Minghella last directed one of his own scripts. The first film, Truly Madly Deeply, was an intriguing meditation on death and letting go. His latest self-penned work, Breaking and Entering, is similarly sophisticated and thoroughly British right down to the chilled temperature of the angst.

Minghella describes the film as "the story of two children who have no father", a neat way of describing a movie in which the children are the maypole around which the adults dance. Jude Law plays Will Frances, an architect who, with his business partner Sandy, Martin Freeman, is revitalising the King's Cross area of London. Business is booming but his home life is in serious decline. His Scandinavian wife Liv, Robyn Wright-Penn, has a daughter Bea with serious behavioural problems bordering on autism. Bea is not Will's daughter and Liv finds it difficult to let Will into their "circle of trust".

When Will relocates the architecture business to crime ridden King's Cross he unwittingly crosses the path of a gang of Eastern European criminals and their underage burglars. The police including CID officer Bruno played by Ray Winstone are baffled by the series of nighttime daring raids. Acrobatic "free running" young Miro is a graceful cat burglar who makes the hit on the new offices, stealing their computer gear not once but twice. Out of sheer frustration Will decides to stake out the premises himself.

He is no thief catcher but Bea's obsessions, including all night exercise and Liv's Scandinavian aloofness, have driven him out of the home. His best friend on these cold nights is streetwalking European prostitute Oana, played by Vera Farmiga. They are platonically drawn to each other as fellow lost souls. Oana is adrift in a "foreign" land and Will is adrift in his own world.

One night whilst on the stakeout Will sees Miro trying to enter the building and follows him home to the council flat he shares with his mother, Juliette Binoche. Miro has become deeply moved by the photographs and videos of Wills family on the computer he stole. He dreams of being an architect so Will's plans for the revitalisation of Kings Cross (as well as his perceived father daughter relationship with Bea) moves him in ways he can't explain.

Will becomes entranced by Miro's seamstress mother and the two begin an affair of sorts. Will is an outsider in his own home and so is Binoche. She has barely escaped from Bosnia and left behind a husband who was killed in the conflict.

The film is beautifully shot in central London. The acting is high calibre. American Wright-Penn subsumes herself in her Nordic character and Binoche is both despairing and strong as the mother who would do anything to protect her son. Vera Farmiga turns in another great performance. Her transformation from the prim psychiatrist of The Departed to this raw, husky streetwalker is impressive.

The movie is not without its problems. Jude Law has, to my mind, played a philanderer too often to be taken seriously as a man in turmoil over his desires. The main trouble is that Minghella's film touches on the depths of emotion, yet the script is spare and metaphoric. It is always difficult to create engaging drama about characters that are remote from each other and we are left with a bunch that aren't all that interesting to watch.

The dead giveaway is the name Wright-Penn's character, Liv, which harks back to Ingmar Bergman and his muse Liv Ullmann. In many ways this is more like one of Bergman's relationship dramas like Scenes from a Marriage than the drama/thriller the trailer as well as the Blu-ray case make it out to be.

This is not the first time that Minghella has faced such charges. Apart from Binoche dangling in the ruins, I found The English Patient to be curiously unemotive and many felt the same way about the Jude Law/Nicole Kidman relationship in Cold Mountain. Truly Madly Deeply had its own problems with emotional engagement, given that one of the characters is dead!

All in all, this is a film where the parts are probably greater that the whole. It can be enjoyed for the performances and also the dour yet stylish view of London.

Interestingly, Minghella talks in the commentary about the origins of the script. The first draft featured a thief who actually returned more items than he took, including items casting a critical eye over the relationship of the couple. I couldn't help feeling that this was a more intriguing idea than the finished product.

Still, there is much to admire in Breaking and Entering, not the least of which is that it is a film for adults amongst a wave of gross out comedies and action mega flicks.

Video

    In his review of the standard definition edition of this film DanielB found the video transfer to be excellent. What can I say about the Blu-ray release except that it is "more excellenter"! The back of the case promises a film that "packs even greater impact in this intensely powerful format".

As with the standard version the film is presented in a 2.35:1 transfer which is the original cinematic aspect ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced.

Buena Vista has provided consumers with a 1080p/VC-1 encode.

In this case the flesh tones are wonderfully rendered and the individual detail on hair , in particular Oana's faux-fur coat, are astounding.

DanielB said that The film has a very naturalistic and subdued colour scheme which does not lend itself to great bursts of colour, however the colours present were well rendered. There is undeniable truth that the colours do not pop as with some other Blu-ray release. Instead we have a stable naturalistic image with deep and precise shadow detail and flesh tones that look entirely realistic. It is not a film that you would use to show off your new high definition home theatre due to the stylistic choices of the director.

There were no imperfections of any type on the disc. I could not detect any edge enhancement and there were no compression issues.

There are a few lines of Croatian in the film which are subtitled.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

The audio quality is very good.

This Blu-ray contains six audio options (not including commentaries). The jewel in the crown is a PCM 5.1 track. There is also an English, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a French and Spanish DTS track. Finally, there is a DTS-HD audio track which my player cannot read and downmixes to DTS. Apologies for the lack of bitrate information but my Blu-ray player does not give detailed audio information. I am awaiting detailed specifications from the distributor and will update the site when they are received.

This is also not a film to show off the high definition audio. There are a few moments of glass breaking and the like which are crisp and clear.

Score aside it is mainly fairly quiet dialogue.

However, that dialogue was reasonably clear and easy to understand. Audio sync was perfect.

The film was jointly scored of by Gabriel Yared best known for his scores of Betty Blue, The English Patient and Cold Mountain and the dance band Underworld of Born Slippy fame. The score is short on dramatics and rather is an atmospheric and constant underpinning of the on-screen action.

In fact the expanded sound palette only added a greater level of immersion. The film has a delicate soundtrack and the level of noise rarely rose above the room temperature.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

A small selection of extras are included with no real added features for the high definition viewer.

Menu

The menu design includes an image from the film accompanied by a room shaking snatch of the soundtrack music.

Audio Commentary- Anthony Minghella (Writer/Director)

Anthony Minghella is a natural speaker and he invests this commentary with his heart. It is full of interesting information though , as said above, at times I felt that the bits he threw away may have been more compelling than the bits he retained. The overall impression I gained was that he had a pet idea over the years that became so transformed by the different film experiences he had that the ideas became muddled. Still Minghella is worth listening to and you won't get bored by this commentary.

Lie, Cheat, Steal, Love : Making of Breaking & Entering (12:19)

A Making of which including interviews with main cast and crew. Like all these features it is long on backslapping and short on real behind the scenes information.

Deleted Scenes (8:40)

These six scenes include an optional director's commentary. The director points out that the film originally began with a good deal more information about Will and his potential (unrequited) for romantic entanglements. These ideas were shelved in favour of a leaner film.

Theatrical Trailer (2:16)

I first saw this trailer at the cinema and expected a tense thriller of sex and crime. The film is a cool drama about infidelity.

Movie Showcase

    This Blu-ray is Region B only. It has not been released in any other Region. Apparently the Region A release will be in February next year.

   Breaking and Entering is a well acted, and lovingly shot look at modern multicultural Britain and the dramas of a group of "little lives". It is no world-beater but those who like their drama cool and analytical will appreciate where Anthony Minghella is coming from.

The Blu-ray version amounts to the best looking and sounding version of the film.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall