BREAKING & ENTERING
A morally uplifting drama buried beneath adult content.
Should You Watch It?
BREAKING & ENTERING is slow but captivating, with brilliant, quiet performances and a morally uplifting destination. Its story takes infidelity, family conflict, cultural tension, and crime seriously, eventually suggesting that repentance, confession, forgiveness, and compassion are the best ways to set things right.
That message is costly to reach. The film includes explicit foul language, sex, nudity, alcohol, smoking, and other immoral behavior. Its positive ending cannot make those elements suitable for children or young teens.
If you are an adult who can engage those concerns with discernment, the film offers genuine moral and dramatic value. For family viewing, choose something else; this is WORTH THE TRIP — ADULTS ONLY.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESWill is an upper-class architect working on a major waterfront project in London. His demanding work leaves less time for Liv, his melancholy girlfriend, and her troubled 13-year-old daughter, Bea.
A gang of thieves uses a teenager named Miro to break into Will’s offices. While trying to understand the burglaries, Will follows Miro to the apartment he shares with his widowed mother, Amira, a seamstress. With his relationship already in crisis, Will makes choices that place his family, conscience, and future in jeopardy.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means this is a strong, engaging drama with significant flaws. The acting is quiet, realistic, and brilliant. Jude Law, Robin Penn Wright, and Juliette Binoche each give one of their best performances, while newcomer Rafi Gavron is a real find as Miro.
Anthony Minghella’s direction is measured, but this is one of his more engaging and uplifting movies. The film becomes a poignant melodrama about infidelity, family conflicts, cultural differences, and setting things right. Its pace is slow, yet the drama remains captivating.
The Worldview
BREAKING & ENTERING presents a mixed pagan worldview with light Christian and moral elements. It depicts a man guilty of cheating who eventually does the right thing, repents, publicly confesses, and seeks a permanent relationship with his girlfriend. The story also connects moral change with helping a troubled teenager turn his life around.
The film’s central moral insight is its strongest feature: personal problems are not solved through secrecy, selfishness, or moral evasion, but through confession, repentance, forgiveness, and compassion. It also presents a confused, post-Christian secular world in which people from different cultures must move beyond their divisions.
At the same time, the movie includes moral relativism, including an attitude toward crime among poor and lower-working-class people that the review identifies as false. It contains politically correct multiculturalism, though not in a strident or offensive way, and includes a woman attending quiet, moderate Muslim services without overt Islamic content. The film’s positive conclusion rests more on unstated Christian values than on a committed faith in Jesus Christ.
The film’s longing for restoration points toward a biblical truth: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Mixed pagan worldview with light Christian and moral elements, wherein man guilty of cheating on his long-term, live-in girlfriend eventually does the right thing, repents, publicly confesses, and decides to make a permanent relationship with girlfriend and also helps a troubled teenager turn his life around in the process, with the attendant moral strife that comes with such pagan problems and conflicts, plus some politically correct aspects that seem to favor multiculturalism (but nothing stridently in-your-face) and some statements promote moral relativism, including a false antinomian attitude toward crime among the poor and lower working class, and woman attends quiet, moderate Muslim services of some kind but no overt Islamic content occurs; about 19 obscenities, four strong profanities and six light profanities; light violence such as boy breaks glass and board to break into office twice, girl slips and falls on some pipes at construction site, police nab boy, man chases thief who jumps along roofs, and woman falls down; strong sexual content includes unmarried couple passionately fools around in bed, implied oral sex, unmarried couple lives together, man cheats on his live-in girlfriend with another woman, and prostitute is a minor character and is seen coming from behind a building followed by a man zipping up his pants; brief upper female nudity, rear nudity, and upper male nudity; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, cheating, burglaries, man establishes a weird friendship with prostitute not for sex but to talk with, and man saves boy from juvenile prison.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The film connects confession and repentance with restored relationships. Why is confession difficult, and what does genuine repentance require?
1 John 1:9 · 2 Corinthians 7:10Will’s choices damage his family and force him to face consequences. How should forgiveness and accountability work together?
Ephesians 4:32 · Galatians 6:1–2The story brings people from different cultures into conflict and relationship. What does Scripture ask of us when cultural differences create distance?
Romans 12:18 · Ephesians 2:14Miro is a troubled teenager whose life can still change. How can compassion help someone without excusing wrongdoing?
Micah 6:8 · Galatians 6:1The Final Word
BREAKING & ENTERING is a slow, absorbing drama with brilliant acting and a meaningful message about repentance, confession, forgiveness, and compassion. Its explicit language, sex, nudity, and other adult material make it unsuitable for children and young teens. For discerning adults, it is WORTH THE TRIP — ADULTS ONLY.
