An anatomy of one problematic multi-racial neighborhood, London’s King’s Cross, “Breaking and Entering” is the first Minghella film in a long time based on his original screenplay. Minghella returns to his roots for a moody, socially relevant drama that, in its exploration of race, class, and sex, recalls last year’s Oscar-winner “Crash,” as well as a number of British films, such as Frears’ “Dirty Pretty Things.”

Ultimately, though, “Entering and Breaking” is overreaching (which is good), and increasingly contrived, pretentious, and overwrought (which is not good).

A warning: Don’t be misled by the title of the film, which, once seen, is quite accurate and makes perfect sense, but on paper, sounds like a caper or heist picture, which is only one part of the multi-layered story.

Protagonist is Will Francis (Jude Law, who also starred in Minghella’s “Cold Mountain”), a successful architect who goes through a moral and personal crisis upon realizing that his life is meaningless. The film begins with Will’s voiceover, stating that he and his longtime Swedish-American companion Liv (Robin Wright Penn) have lost touch with each other’s needs. Liv has given up her career as a documentarian to take care of her daughter Bea (Rogers), an autistic girl obsessed with gymnastics.

Will partners with Sandy (Martin Freeman) in a prosperous landscape architecture firm, Green Effect, working on a project to redirect the canal through the heart of the reconstruction program in King’s Cross, an area known for its high crime rate, prostitution, and other urban ills.

Despite warnings that this is a bad neighborhood for an elegant office, the two men decide to set shop there. It’s a courageous act for which they immediately pay a price, when a gang of athletic youths, headed by Miro (Rafi Gavron), a Bosnian teen, breaks in and steals their Apple computer and other equipment.

Needless to say, at first, the prime suspect is the cleaning crew, which is of African descent, which upsets Sandy because he’s sexually attracted to one of the African female members.
The hoodlums’ team pulls off the heist twice in succession, causing Will and Sandy to start a nighttime stakeout of their own offices in an attempt to catch the thieves. Perceiving Will’s frequent absences as signs of domestic trouble, Liv seeks help from a therapist (Juliet Stevenson), while Will starts to look outside the relationship for fulfillment.

Enters (without breaking in) a feisty and chatty Romanian hooker (Vera Farmiga) who joins Will on his stakeouts, and the two engage in a platonic friendship. One evening, while having coffee together, Will spots Miro. It’s turning point in the movie, after which heavy-handed, contrived melodramatics kicks in.

Will follows Miro to the bleak council estate where he lives with his mother Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian Muslim seamstress still suffering from the war that had killed her Serb husband and has made her adolescent son a petty criminal. The next day, Will shows up with clothes for Amira to mend.

Rather than report the thief's address to the police officer (Ray Winstone), Will starts courting the reticent Amira, at first pretending to need her skills. He leaves his card with her, suggesting that Miro comes to his office to pursue an interest in architecture.

When Bea gets involved in an accident on the construction site, Will’s relationship with Liv vomes to a halt. And Miro's unjust arrest make Will realize how foolishly he had jeopardized his true romance.

In the plot’s most improbable note, the tentative friendship between Will and Amira evolves into a full-fledged affair. Soon after, when Amira finds out Will’s real motivation, she feels betrayed and decides to strike back, by blackmailing him with compromising photos she had taken of him.

Minghella is an intelligent filmmaker, but, as was evident in “The English Patient,” his forte is not linear storytelling. Thus, in the midst of the suspenseful yarn, there are digressions in the form of quasi-philosophical discussions and even moralistic attitudinizing. While this strategy worked well, enriching the text of “English Patient,” here it comes across as an imposition.

Minghella indulges in symbolism, while turning a potentially taut and timely yarn into an overlong melodrama, further marred by clear closure that negates the otherwise predominantly ambiguous tone.

By the film’s end, Bosnian Amira and Miro go back to Sarajevo, and Will and Live are back together. Can life go back to its normal course, with no apparent changes after such traumatic experiences?

As an effort at a realistic, slice of life movie, centering on a group of people bound together by random and unlikely events, “Breaking and Entering” is only partially successful. The movie is at once overdeveloped and underdeveloped. For example, some of the details that initially sound crucial, such as the daughter’s autism, or even the interracial mixing, turn out to be irrelevant or unimportant later on.

Initially, the film’s characters, all confused and conflicted, resist stereotypes, but then succumb to the director’s uneven treatment. Working (too) diligently to set up an intricate plot, Minghella contrasts Will's unfulfilling relationship with Liv with the bond he develops with Amira. These parallel structures are too symmetrical, resulting in a film in which the characters are used as pawns as the tale heads toward its pat and improbable ending.

In a manner that recalls the presupposition of Soderbergh’s “sex, lies & videotape,” the acts of larceny and deceit become relative, a matter of degree, rather than absolutes. Hence, as viewers we are asked to place the various breaking-ins on a scale. Which is worse: the physical act or larceny, sexual adultery, or the emotional deceit?

The film is essentially an examination of culture-collisions, distances between people of different nationalities and races. However, unfortunately, Minghella relegates the Bosnians, the film's most interesting persona, to a secondary status, instead placing emphasis on the rich white couple that's self-absorbed and indulgent in problems.

Rather disappointingly, as the conflicted protagonist, Jude Law comes across as too self-absorbed and even opaque, and he may be too intelligent to play a man who commits such errors with no self-awareness.

French actress Binoche, who won Supporting Oscar for Minghella’s The English Patient, gives the film’s gravity (and most compelling performance), inhabiting the role of protective mother and war widow with conviction, even if makes little sense that she'd be a willing participant in this illicit affair.

Martin Freeman, as Will's business partner, gives a rich, complex performance, and as the fatherless teenager, goaded on by his Serbian uncle to continue stealing despite his inclinations, Gavron is a new talent to watch.

Cast of the secondary characters is good, particularly Ray Winstone as the well-meaning investigating detective, and Verma Farmiga, as a local hooker, running some funny commentary on her profession.

This is zeitgeist film that’s impressively nonjudgmental and compelling up to a point. Minghella’s good intention and humanism are undeniable, but the film walks a fine line between a subtle drama and an earnest social melodrama of a neighborhood in transition. What could have been an intelligent adult drama, about the cost of urban renewal, the aftermath of the Balkan war, Britain’s escalating problems due to enormous immigrant population, increasingly becomes a contrived melodrama.

Minghella brings us the story of Will, (Jude Law) an architect who has just opened up his own company with his long time business partner Sandy (Martin Freeman). Unfortunately, they open up on a rough side of London and have a few “B & E’s” before taking it upon themselves to sniff out the culprit. The culprit however, is a young fifteen year old boy, Miro (Rafi Gavron) who works for a gang of thugs who consists of his late father’s side of the family. The acrobatic Miro must jump railings, rooftops, etc. in order to shake authorities but somehow finds himself intrigued by Will’s architecture. When Will is not sniffing, he is distancing himself away from his long time girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and her behaviorally challenged daughter Beatrice. The strain on their relationship has been ten years in the making with their unmarried lifestyle and soon to become familiar nature.

After many nights of sitting and having conversations with the local and extremely humorous prostitute, (Vera Farmiga) Will discovers his guilty party and pursues Miro all the way to his home. In Miro’s home he lives with his hard-working and loving mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche) and Will’s attraction is sparked immediately before even fathoming a mention of Miro. The two start a very involved and passionate love affair with Amira having no knowledge of Miro’s extracurricular events.

Minghella does a fantastic job of wrapping us in the story from the premise of the film but somewhere in the ladder we are left on the side of the road in an unbalanced rising action. In its 120 minutes of running time, the audience meets and greets the characters; we are brought intimately with each of them and like Minghella’s previous works, he introduces us with much dialogue but in this case it was not enough to suffice. While I admire the honesty, truth and expression of human weakness of the picture, I needed a little more to pull me along the story to keep me progressing.

As usual Gabriel Yared’s score is evident and gives great conviction to each scene along with the beautiful camera work and editing and fortunately, the performances were sufficient enough to keep me intrigued in the story. Jude Law regrettably is “Dan” from “Closer” for a good duration of the film but rest assure by the final act he gives his best performance to date. Not entirely sure what happened the first 2/3 of the film but Law completely lost himself in “Will” for the resolution and emerged a true leading thespian. It is Law’s final performance that saves the film from being ordinary to something a little more. I’m uncertain of his chances with the “Gold Man” because we’ve seen a Jude Law like this before and he’s had excellent chemistry with Minghella as we saw in his previous nominated works. I suppose there’s too much flaw in his armor to carry it all the way to battle.

Juliette Binoche has proved time and time again that she is a reliable actress to carry a film. As the refugee survivor “Amira,” Binoche stretches out her legs to give us someone utterly heartbreaking and unlike what we’ve seen before. The admiration for “Amira” is in her strong and undying espousal for her son. Amira is determined to set her son straight on a path and you can’t deny the love between them. It is in the intimate moments of laughing and kissing between the mother and son, that we find the emotional center of the tale. Minghella really deserves praise for directing and showing us one of the best mother-son moments of contemporary cinema. Binoche and Gavron are truly that good.

The standout and M.V.P. of the film is the no-less than perfect Robin Wright-Penn as Oscar’s favorite lady; the suffering wife or in this case girlfriend. Wright has taken large steps in Indie films the past few years but she gives the Swedish and beautiful Liv, a sense of humanity that actresses like Winslet and Weisz can only pull off. “Liv” is an attentive mother, a loving girlfriend, but a woman with a tortured soul that by credits end you bring home with you. Despite some of her accent flaws, which came from time to time, Wright never leaves “Liv” unattended and gives the film the backbone needed to walk a very rough road. If there’s any aspect of the film to nominate it is Robin Wright-Penn for charisma, zeal and dedication to a role that sounds formula-matic on paper but no formula in sight. There’s much fondness in “Liv” and many women can relate to her character which is probably why she’s so great.

As this was being touted as Minghella’s best work to date, I might pass on that notion. We could see a worthy screenplay nomination and a much needed Maria Bello-like nomination for Robin Wright-Penn. (I’m telling you, it’s that good) Other than that, nothing spectacular about the movie although it may appeal to crowds of Minghella stalkers and lovers but not to this critic.

The sound of ideals — political and personal — slowly deflating hisses throughout Breaking and Entering. Beautiful, impoverished Bosnian war refugee Amira (Juliette Binoche) is anxious to save her son (Rafi Gavron) from the street-thug future he’s barreling toward. Meanwhile, Will’s long-term girlfriend, Liv (Robin Wright Penn), is turning her vaguely autistic daughter into her life’s work, leaving her romance, and her mind, in ruins.

Director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, Cold Mountain) likes his films packed with actors; watch for Vera Farmiga and Ray Winstone entering, making Law look dull, then leaving. Minghella teases out fantastic performances from Robin Wright Penn, who radiates the isolation of a true depressive, and Binoche, who offers brief but wonderful glints that in her life before the war, she was an easy laugher, a woman with a light heart.

The collision of such disparate and desperate people only happens in the movies, and Minghella’s gift/handicap is that his films always feel like films — too clever, too clean, too chiseled to have much to do with the real world. Still, there is something about the breakdown of a lived-in relationship like Will and Liv’s that matters. It is in those unnoted moments of distance between old lovers that Minghella comes close to showing the real crimes of the heart.

Will and Sandy (Law and Freeman) have started an environmentally friendly architecture firm in Kings Cross. But their trendy warehouse office space proves to be a magnet for burglars, most notably the acrobatic teen Miro (Gavron). For Will, these break-ins are a welcome distraction from his troubled long-term relationship with Liv (Wright Penn), whose autistic teen daughter (Rogers) is a real challenge. After following Miro home, Will worms his way into the life of Miro's mother Amira (Binoche), a Bosnian refugee. Is this a big mistake or a new future?

The film is essentially an examination of the distances between people, in this case the diverse residents of a London neighbourhood, with their contrasting backgrounds, hopes and fears. As a result, the film is full of ideas and themes we identify with; and the cast is strong enough to keep us engaged even when the story gets both obvious and sentimental. And when Minghella indulges in trite symbolism while stretching a simple story into an overlong melodrama.

But there's plenty to enjoy. Law and Binoche carry their conflicted characters well, while Wright Penn beautifully conveys inner turmoil without sinking into misery. These are raw, rough-edged characters who continually resist stereotypes. The supporting cast is even better, most notably Gavron's sympathetic young thief. But subplots featuring Farmiga and Chikezie seem to vanish just when we want to know more. And the terrific Freeman, Winstone and Stevenson are on screen far too briefly.

The whole film has this underdeveloped feel to it: plot strands dangle everywhere, while most of the quirky details turn out to be irrelevant (such as the daughter's autism or the mix of nationalities). But then, perhaps that's the point. This is a slice of life movie, catching a group of random people bound together by the most unlikely events and experiences. In this sense, it's beautifully observant and hopeful, with a wonderfully cathartic climax. But it doesn't tell us anything new.

Because King's Cross -- what Americans might call an "iffy" neighborhood -- is undergoing extensive urban renewal, young professionals rub shoulders with people who have recently fled from war or privation in their native lands. There is less animosity in Minghella's portrait of these collisions of class and ethnicity than may in fact be the case. He is determined that his characters will possess empathy, though, let's face it, some of that empathy stems from sexual attraction.

All of which means "Breaking" is a tough movie to market. The title makes it sound like a caper or crime film, and its themes can't easily be summed up in snappy ad copy. The film will need positive reviews and word-of-mouth to lead audiences to this often rewarding though occasionally pretentious story where a neighborhood is really the central character.

Will Francis (Jude Law) owns a landscape architecture company with his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman). The firm is a leading force in the revitalization of King's Cross. Indeed the men are so enthusiastic about seeing their heady ideas translated into reality that they decide to headquarter their state-of-the-art office in a renovated factory building in King's Cross.

People warn them that this is a bad place for an office. Sure enough, a gang of athletic youths led by Bosnian teen Miro (Rafi Gavron) breaks in and steals equipment and laptops. Suspicion falls on the African cleaning crew, which angers Sandy because he has a crush on one female worker.

After a second burglary, Will stakes out the place at night in the hopes of catching the thieves. Back at home, his absence is interpreted, justifiably, as an escape from domestic turmoil. He and his longtime live-in girlfriend, Liv (Robin Wright Penn), a Swedish-American, are drifting apart as Liv is consumed with worry about her emotionally troubled daughter Bea (Poppy Rogers).

While watching his office building, Will develops a peculiar relationship with a feisty Romanian prostitute, Oana (Vera Farmiga). They sit in his car and chat about life but this subplot is mostly serendipitous. One night, though, he does spot Miro and gives chase. Will follows Miro to the flat he shares with his tailor mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche).

To investigate the break-ins further, Will brings clothes for Amira to mend the next day. A friendship between these two blossoms, rather improbably, into a clandestine love affair. Only after they become lovers does Amira learn of Will's ulterior motive in coming to her in the first place. So to protect her son, she sets out to blackmail him.

While this is an original screenplay, you might think it stems from a novel the way characters ruminate about life and speculate philosophically in the middle of scenes. In this manner, theft becomes a major metaphor. Will and Liv must wonder which larceny is the graver crime: Miro's theft of Will's possessions or Will's theft of his mother's heart.

The saving grace to all this moralizing and musing is that Minghella does not go for easy answers. Characters are caught in confusion because of conflicted feelings. Often they do the wrong thing. Minghella doesn't want to judge people. And his actors give him fine portraits in disorientation, of immigrants trying to get their bearings in a foreign land or professionals who feel perhaps guilty over invading the terrain of the new arrivals in the name of urban renewal.

You sense that Minghella is unable to make up his mind about the issues he raises and the behavior of his characters. "Breaking" not only has a sense of discovery of this cross-section of King's Cross but also a sense of disorder and randomness. Not every motive is pinned down; not every act has a motive.

Law makes a man who is at times a cad basically sympathetic. Binoche give the film's most touching performance as a woman who has not experienced physical love in a long while only to discover that it carries a steep price. Wright Penn makes Liv a woman who is ice but wants desperately to be heat. Gavron mirrors the dilemma of an immigrant youth torn between a Muslim and Christian heritage.

Obviously, Alex McDowell's production design and Benoit Delhomme's cinematography make major contributions in turning the ominous streets, row flats and enormous construction sites into a living, breathing character. The score, a mix of the group Underground and Gabriel Yared, supplies a poetic musical backdrop.

Meanwhile, the acrobatic boy responsible for the break-ins (Rafi Gavron) is at odds with his mother (Juliette Binoche) over things like truancy and his ties to fellow displaced Serbs known for criminal behavior. The two stories collide in a very devastating way that really shook me up thanks to solid acting and a very strong script and directorial effort from Anthony Minghella (Cold Mountain), who is making his first present day flick in 13 years. His last three film have seen five Oscar nominations and two wins for acting alone.

I've not quite been able to put my finger on it yet, but it took me a while to move once Entering ended. It shook me up, though I'm still wondering what the point of Farmiga's character was. Still, while I sat there paralyzed, I got to enjoy a new Sigur Rós song that played over the closing credits. Today was officially the post-rock day of the festival.

Here, Jude Law stars as Will, an architect out to transform the poverty-stricken King's Row area of London who enters into an intricate liaison with a Bosnian widow (Juliette Binoche) after her son and some of his confederates break into his office and steal the company computers. Working diligently to set up an intricate plot, director/writer Anthony Minghella contrasts Will's uncommunicative marriage with the deep bond he soon develops with a family of poor refugees from war-torn Bosnia. The parallel structure of the movie, though, is so symmetrically pat that the characters end up as pawns in the picture's earnest humanism.

Law comes across as opaque, failing to provide the shadings needed to show us what Will hopes to gain (or lose) from the romantic attachment he establishes with the widow. The picture might have developed some dramatic tension if Robin Wright-Penn, as Will’s wife, was allowed to play more than just a sounding board. Luckily, Binoche gives the picture some gravity, but it makes little sense that she'd be a willing participant in this illicit affair.

The only real snap in the movie is provided by the background characters. Ray Winstone gets to be sharp as razor blades playing the investigating detective. Verma Farmiga, as a local hooker, provides some funny and lively off-color commentary on her profession. And Martin Freeman (the British "Office"), who plays Will's business partner, gives a performance of such rich complexity and sly humor that if his story was at the heart of the movie, "Breaking and Entering" would be more than just a minor misdemeanor.

The film opens with a fox (a predator. get it?) roaming the streets of London early in the morning. He goes from one neighborhood that is notoriously bad, to a much nicer one where Will (Jude Law) lives with his longtime girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and her daughter, who suffers from many odd symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder. Jude Law is a very successful architect who is starting a new project in this bad neighborhood where he plans to redesign it into what looks like a futuristic Venice. They’ve just moved into their new office, which is in this slum and on its very first night unattended, it is burgled by two young Bosnian teens who work for a small time crook. The next day at the office, suspicions fly around as everyone as a theory on how it was done. Many try to blame the black cleaning woman who is the last to leave at night, though she is adamantly defended by Will’s partner, (a very funny and underused Martin Freeman), who has an awkward crush on her, not unlike another “office” crush Freeman has been known to have in past. Everything expensive is stolen from the office, including Will’s laptop, and most things are replaced the next day. However, once everything is back in order, the office is broken into again, with things stolen, only this time the thief leaves a CD on Will’s desk that contains all the pictures and videos from Will’s computer.

Will realizes that they are in a bad part of town and this is bound to keep happening so he takes it upon himself to sit in his car and guard the building on most nights, much to the dismay of Liv who already has concerns of him working too much. It is here where the film could use some major cuts. On their first night on watch, Law and Freeman are approached by a hooker. She flashes some skin, and says she’ll do anything for fifty pounds, except talk. Soon she invites herself in the car and is making jokes, which the audience was eating up. The next night she comes back. The next night she brings Law coffee and does a strip tease in the car. I thought, “Wow. For someone who says that she doesn’t like to talk, she sure won’t shut up.” There are at least two scenes too many with her and she is mostly played for laughs, which doesn’t match the mood of the rest of the film. Supposedly by the end of the film her character is supposed to mean something, but I didn’t get it or really care.

On the last night of his watch, Law just barely sees the teen trying to break in to the building again. Just barely because he’s talking to the hooker and he and the audience are distracted. He phones the police but fears they won’t make it in time so he chases the boy and follows him home, where he sees that he lives with his tailor mother, (a beautiful Juliette Binoche), who Will had a brief encounter with a few days before. The next day he goes back to her place and asks her to repair a coat and fix some more clothes of his. While there, he peeks into the son’s room and sees a few of the things stolen from the office. He continues to get close to Binoche and eventually they kiss and it seems like they might become involved romantically. Is Will falling in love with her? He has a wonderful family at home who he seems to love dearly. Law plays these scenes perfectly, almost as if his character feels guilty and is pretending to fall in love out of some sort of charity, in order to make her life seem a little better. He enters this relationship keeping his secret from her, as she keeps a few secrets from his as well.

I know it seems like I’ve probably told you the whole plot. Well I haven’t. This is just scratching the surface. However, for all the more that the film offers, it doesn’t discuss or explore all of the ideas that come up. Too often and too early do they spell out what we and the characters are supposed to think, (“Sometimes a thief is actually the victim” and “Feelings can also be stolen.”) and too rarely does it really give the characters a chance to discuss just how complicated the situations really are. I was especially disappointed with the end, which seemed to resolve itself far too quickly, and Penn is barely in the third act, which doesn’t help us understand the justification behind the decision that she makes. If there were different endings shot or scenes cut, I would urge Minghella to restore these scenes, as the whole moral of the piece depends on them.

The performances are all excellent. This is the strongest I’ve ever seen Jude Law, as he doesn’t play a charming, beautiful guy. What am I saying? Of course he does. But what makes his performance so mature and deep is that he plays him as an ordinary guy who doesn’t use his looks and charms to his advantage in life. That is until he tries to seduce Binoche, which makes him feel as uncomfortable as it does her. Watch for the scene when they make a bed together and compare it to one of the best scenes in the film when Law and Penn discuss some memories as they undress. Penn is also wonderful in the film. Between this and her segment in “Nine Lives” she is really winning me back as a fan and delivering the best performances of her career. Binoche is excellent, per usual. Both children are great and have great scenes with their respected parents, and are both incredible gymnasts to boot. Martin Freeman is kind of dropped from the film and it’s too bad. He enters the film seemingly for comic relief, but his character could have been much more interesting and complex if they had given him more to do, but he still gets off a few hilarious lines. And Ray Winstone and Juliet Stephenson both have a couple of scenes that suggest that there are pieces of them on the cutting room floor.

Overall, I’d say this is a very strong film that is a little let down by the ending. If it wanted to be intentionally vague, that’s fine, but then we should at least understand why the characters are so quick to let things go. I don’t know if this will make a lot of top ten lists, but I could certainly see any of the lead performances be nominated next awards season, especially Law who is getting stronger every year. So I say see this film. You might not like it, but it’s the kind of story that you’ll enjoy sharing your opinion on.