"Breaking" - Film Review
There’s not much in terms of excess when it comes to Breaking. The film is a lean, unapologetic look at the life of Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega). He’s a veteran of the United States Marine Corps who is denied financial support from Veterans Affairs. Desperate for any type of financial relief he can find, Brian holds a Wells Fargo bank hostage. Along with Brian, there are two bank employees inside, Estel (Nicole Beharie) and Rosa (Selenis Leyva). What follows is a fraught standoff between Brian and the police.
It would be wrong to describe Breaking as a thriller, despite the way the tension builds throughout, because that would take away from the emotional resonance of Boyega’s performance. Most audiences will remember the name from his role as Finn from the new Star Wars trilogy, but Boyega’s performance in Breaking is a complete departure from those films. There are no heavy-duty prosthetics, no wigs, no physical changes to Boyega, yet he is fully transformed in this film. He is desperate, gentle, and angry all at once. A masterful balancing act that the movie needs in order to be successful.
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Beharie is consistently a quiet force of nature in her supporting roles. Her performance in Breaking is no different. As one of the hostages, she doesn’t have as many lines as Boyega or the tv reporter (Connie Britton) and the police negotiator (Michael Kenneth Williams), but her presence is undeniably captivating.
It’s easy to think about Aubrey Plaza’s similarly unrecognizable performance in Emily the Criminal, another Sundance movie about a desperate person crippled by debt. Emily and Brian are desperate because they’re fighting against a system that has failed them. They’re filled with anger because they lived their lives the way society told them to, only to have that same society turn its back on them when they needed support the most.
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Unfortunately, there isn’t much depth to any of the characters. Boyega’s performance elevates the bare-bones characterization in the script, but Breaking only touches the surface of the important themes of mental health and systemic failure. If anything, Breaking is pulling its punches. There is much more to be said about the systems that are built to help people, but fail because of bureaucratic red tape.
As slight as the script is, Breaking does feel essential. At times, the film skews close to being emotionally manipulative, but it’s vital nonetheless. It’s a damning look at how much $892.34 means to one man and how this story is not entirely about money. It’s about a man who has an individual who has been screaming to be heard, only to be handed a pamphlet and promptly ignored by the organization that’s meant to protect him. Breaking is an angry condemnation of Veterans Affairs, a twenty-first-century companion to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”
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