'Breaking' review: John Boyega shines in tense drama
John Boyega stars in "Breaking." Credit: Everett Collection/Bleecker Street Media
PLOT A near-homeless Marine veteran hatches a desperate plot to make his plight known.
CAST John Boyega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Connie Britton
RATED PG-13 (adult themes)
LENGTH 1:43
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE Strong turns from Boyega and Williams anchor a tense, rueful drama.
John Boyega plays a man sliding into invisibility in “Breaking,” Abi Damaris Corbin’s compelling feature film debut. Based on a true story, it features Boyega as Brian Brown-Easley, a former Marine who served in Iraq and is now on the brink of homelessness. After repeatedly failing to recover a missing disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brian walks into a Wells Fargo bank in an Atlanta suburb and announces that his backpack contains a bomb.
“Sometimes when people steal from you,” he tells his daughter by phone while hostages quaver nearby, “you have no choice. You gotta get it back.”
“Breaking” draws heavily from “Dog Day Afternoon,” the robbery-gone-wrong classic from 1975 (also based on a true story), and from “John Q,” a fictional drama starring Denzel Washington as a man who commandeers a hospital to demand surgery for his son. Though this movie lacks the sophistication of the former, it doesn’t resort to the ham-fisted “issues” messaging of the latter. Sensitively directed by Corbin, who co-wrote with Kwame Kwei-Armah, “Breaking” keeps its focus almost entirely on Brian, a man refusing to fall quietly through society’s cracks.
It's an unusually meaty role for Boyega, a star of the recent “Star Wars” and “Pacific Rim” franchises. He draws a little too heavily from Washington — a certain tilt of the chin and a shake of the head — but he capably portrays a man coming apart at the seams. Brian is polite one moment, threatening the next, sometimes both at once. We learn that he’s mentally ill and even delusional, but we also sense that real violence isn’t in him.
Boyega is supported by a fine cast, starting with Michael Kenneth Williams (HBO’s “The Wire”). In his final performance filmed before his death last year, Williams plays Eli Bernard, a local cop who becomes Brian’s negotiator. It’s a somewhat small role, but Williams inhabits it fully and provides some of the film’s stronger emotional beats. Nicole Beharie and Selenis Leyva are solid as bank staffers who become hostages; Connie Britton plays a television producer who lucks into an exclusive real-time interview with Brian.
“Breaking” identifies so strongly with its troubled hero that it seems unable to step back and show us a larger picture. Still, the filmmakers have given Brian Brown-Easley the one thing he wanted: to be seen.
