{"id":9338,"date":"2018-05-12T16:07:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T20:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=9338"},"modified":"2019-01-12T14:47:18","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T19:47:18","slug":"review-breaking-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-breaking-in\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: <i>Breaking In<\/i> Not Exactly Breaking the Mold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s &#8220;good enough, I guess, if you&#8217;re not too picky&#8221; home-invasion thriller is <em>Breaking In<\/em>,&#8221;which offers the innovative twist of the bad guys getting inside and holding the kids captive while the mom is locked <em>outside<\/em> and has to &#8220;break in,&#8221; as it were. What will those geniuses in Hollywood come up with next?!<\/p>\n<p>A wealthy white-collar criminal has passed away, necessitating a visit by his estranged daughter, Shaun (Gabrielle Union), to his high-tech, super-secured house to get it ready to go on the market. For fun, she brings along her young teenage children, Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) and Glover (Seth Carr); her husband, who exists (a rarity for a mom-and-kids thriller), stays home because the plot doesn&#8217;t need him.<\/p>\n<p>But wouldn&#8217;t you know it, a quartet of bad guys have scheduled this very weekend for their burglary of the house, where they believe there&#8217;s a hidden safe full of cash. Shaun gets trapped outdoors with one of the dudes (Mark Furze) while the other three &#8212; Eddie (Billy Burke) the leader, Duncan (Richard Cabral) the psycho, and Sam (Levi Meaden) the tweaker with a heart of gold &#8212; lock themselves in the impenetrable fortress of a house with Jasmine and Glover.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever you think will happen next is probably about right. The screenplay, by formula-friendly Ryan Engle (<em>Rampage<\/em>, <em>The Commuter<\/em>), hews closely to the routine, and director James McTeigue (<em>V for Vendetta<\/em>) keeps things safely PG-13 (watch for the F-words that have been dubbed over with &#8220;frickin'&#8221; or &#8220;full-on,&#8221; as in, &#8220;He&#8217;s a full-on psycho&#8221;). The formula allows for a few brief thrills and for Union to have her don&#8217;t-get-between-a-mama-bear-and-her-cubs moments, basically meeting the minimum acceptable standards for this type of movie. But don&#8217;t go out of your way to see it; there&#8217;ll probably be another one just like it in a week or two.<\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">C+<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5>1 hr., 28 min; rated PG-13 for\u00a0violence, menace, bloody images, sexual references, and brief strong language<\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<div><em>Join our <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>! Like us on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/crookedmarquee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s &#8220;good enough, I guess, if you&#8217;re not too picky&#8221; home-invasion thriller is Breaking In,&#8221;which offers the innovative twist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":9339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}