In Breaking, John Boyega recounts the tragic true story of a wronged veteran
The well-meaning film falls short, despite a terrific cast that also features the great Michael K. Williams in his final screen role
Film Reviews John Boyega
Going into Breaking, it’s important to at least know about the tragic true events that inspired Abi Damaris Corbin’s compassionate, if not standard-issue directorial debut. On a sweltering summer day in 2017, 33-year-old Marine veteran Brian Brown-Easley was shot and killed by law enforcement after holding up a Wells Fargo branch in Atlanta, claiming that he had a bomb on him.
Brown-Easley made it clear that he was not intending to hurt anyone or even rob the bank, but instead wanted the attention of the media in order to bring awareness to his dire situation: the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs somehow denied him his modest $892 monthly disability check, an inexplicable and maddening glitch that would put him on the streets with no resources or options. Predictably, the man who is remembered to be polite and composed by those involved in the ordeal had no bomb on him. And like many victims of excessive force or police overreaction across the country, he was black.
In the opening moments of Breaking—based on a piece of long-form journalism titled “They Didn’t Have To Kill Him” that was adapted and dramatized by Corbin and Kwame Kwei-Armah—the co-writers establish with sensitivity and narrative economy the dreadful world in which Easley dwells. Acutely played by John Boyega, mostly with emotional restraint (but occasionally, forgivable showiness), Brian barely scrapes by in a cheap motel, relying on disability checks that keep him afloat. He can’t sustain a job due to both the physical and psychological hits he’s taken after honorably serving in both Kuwait and Iraq. A playful and loving conversation with his precious daughter Kiah (London Covington) gets cut short when Brian runs out of credit on his phone, leaving him with no work, no stable connection to his daughter, and no real home.
Portrayed by an actor whose palpable sincerity and pressure-cooker intensity evokes a young Denzel Washington, Boyega’s troubled character subsequently enters a suburban Wells Fargo, where he approaches friendly teller Rosa Diaz (Orange is the New Black’s terrific Selenis Leyva) and slips her a note that simply reads, “I have a bomb.” Branch manager Estel Valerie (the astonishing and poised Nicole Beharie of Juneteenth) detects trouble before everyone else, but soon we’re locked in the bank as just Estel, Rosa and Brian must resolve this impossible situation. Deep down, Brian knows that his chances of walking out alive are slim. “He must be white,” he observes when he hears about a similar lawbreaker captured unharmed by the authorities. But he wants his voice heard.
Sadly, Corbin’s steady control of the film’s tempo weakens after the introduction of a number of brand-new characters at the other end of a phone line. The most significant of them, a negotiator that Brian demands, is played by the late, great Michael K. Williams in his final screen role. While there’s so much heart in the men’s exchanges, Breaking’s narrative propulsion still lags, even with a full-formed Dog Day Afternoon-adjacent ecosystem to explore; Breaking almost stubbornly remains surface-level in its insights into the characters, unlike Lumet’s classic. Estel’s nimble thinking and compassion, Valerie’s fear, Eli’s impossible task to facilitate Brian’s survival, and the media’s haphazard involvement all beg for more depth throughout. Meanwhile with Brian, the film seldom ventures inside the head and broader life of this disarmingly polite man, who never makes a demand without a please or a thank you.
Refreshing exceptions occur in a pair of insightful scenes. One involves a flashback that puts Brian at odds with unsympathetic bureaucracy, spotlighting the moment when the helpless man develops the need to take matters into his own hands. In the other, Brian politely takes a phone message for Rosa, only to lose his temper when the customer calls back—an illuminating moment that more fully communicates his complexity. Unfortunately, what surrounds them is a sense of monotony that undersells the extreme pressure both Brian and his hostages face.
Nevertheless, Breaking is a noble and deeply sensitive effort that aims to commemorate an honorable veteran who was failed by the dysfunctional and racist country that he bravely served. But despite a committed cast, and a well-staged and devastatingly truthful finale, Corbin fails to break this story out of its predictable mold. So many of this story’s details are easily Google-able that the disappointment of this film is that you never know Brian Brown-Easley any better by the end than you do after the initial set-up—although it badly makes you want to.
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You know what? I don’t know if it’s good, bad or neutral, but I’m always surprised at the letter grade on reviews on here based on the headlines. It’s just funny. Headline: Rose Byrne lights up screen. Grade: DHeadline: Nicholas Hoult halts ticket sales. Grade: A-Is amusing is all.
Yeah, review reads like a B or B+, not a C-
I’ve got three guesses:1. A separate writer/editor does the headline.2. AI handles it – Spanfeller sees the future and his AI will just consolidate every other entertainment site with randomly generated headlines.3. Accuracy be damned, AVC writers want to go with anything catchy after reading those pun-tastic “Nice Price or No Dice” headlines over on Jalopnik.
“1. A separate writer/editor does the headline.”It’s this. It’s always been this, since the dawn of fucking print.Too many goobers on this site have no idea how any of this works.
I learned this rather late in life, so I’m sympathetic. To a layperson, there’s no real reason to have someone write a thousand words and then have someone else come by and write ten more unless Billy is just really good at writing headlines. The A.V. Club still has an occasional good to great headline these days, but it hasn’t had the penchant for it that its estranged sister site had for ages now.In any case, you used to be able to tell whether a grade was going to be a B- or better, because the headline was positive. If a movie was a C or worse, the headline was negative. C+ have always straddled a bit, though generally they fell negative. After the most recent shakeup, this went fairly haywire, and I think they largely settled on what Cosmia said: a neutral title with no indication of quality. But that just seems to confirm that whoever has been writing headlines doesn’t pay much attention to the article itself, and perhaps new guidelines are actively preventing them from doing so somehow.
I’ll be blunt here: Letter grades are idiotic and anyone who pays attention to them is being foolish. I actually added a Stylish rule to my browser to hide the letter grade so that I don’t see them. They convey nothing useful and are a waste of everyone’s time.
For Film Criticism, grades tend to be reductive even at their best. For “Should I watch this movie I’ve never heard of before?” they have some measure of use. I rarely read a review until after I’ve seen a movie, because I like to go in knowing as little as possible, so a quick glance at the grade can mean the difference between me going to a small indie flick or not. I might not have bothered with Vengeance recently if not for the B- it received here. Especially if a Dowd or Vishnevetsky is reviewing a film, it lends some weight to whether or not I’ll want to see it. Of course, the old “thumbs up, thumbs down” model works just as well for this, but I think Disney owns the trademark on that for the next 75 years after buying Roger Ebert’s bones.
Yeah I’ve tried explaining this countless times to people around here. Some are receptive. More just like getting mad at someone/about something I suspect.
Many years ago, in my freelancing days, I gave a mixed review to a movie and made an offhand comment to the effect that it was trying really hard to get Oscar attention. The headline they went with was something like, “[Whatever It Was Called] Goes for Oscar Gold!,” which did not reflect my opinion or the review at all. The movie itself bombed and was quickly forgotten.
They’ve stopped signifying whether headlines are good or bad now. They’re just very plain and neutral like this one.
Sadly stories like this man’s are not uncommon in this day and age. We are sure to see a Breaking 2.
(1) I love John Boyega but I hate to say it, if he keeps making these underperforming and heavy dramas without a big franchise to fall back on, his career is probably gonna disappear, and that would be sad for us and for the social issues he clearly wants to highlight with his work.(2) I love movies like this and Concussion that shine a bright light on the vile things institutions do to people after luring them in and essentially brainwashing them, and make them squirm if only a little bit. It’s sad that the US military can still attract people with their rah rah bullshit knowing that when their service is done (assuming they survive) they will probably have been irreparably scarred AND can expect little if any support from the government to deal with it, despite their absolutely absurd funding. What a fucking joke.
I don’t think he needs a “franchise”, but I’m not sure if he’s going to stick around Hollywood much longer with these small, yet still underperforming projects. I think he’ll be around for awhile, even if that means small stuff across the pond.
a franchise would give him visibility and a paycheck, 2 things he would need to make his apparent strategy to make these small, meaningful (but not terribly commercially marketable) films viable for the long term.
This reads like a review from a high school newspaper’s “MOVIES!” section.
i hope the film is commercially successful. Marvel needs to draft him to play a heroic role.
因为，瘟龟和他的团伙这么做危害的不仅仅是那些上当受骗的人，他们还危害了真正的救援团队和组织的正常运行。那些捐款捐物的爱心人士不可能都能分得清谁是真的，那个又是个西贝货。#Ethnicity#CCP#USCIS