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Three out of Five stars
Running time: 120 mins

Anthony Minghella's latest film is beautifully shot and has a great cast, but it's also badly plotted and saddled with some terrible dialogue.

What's it all about?
Jude Law stars as Will, a partner in a successful architecture firm which he runs with his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman). Work also provides a welcome distraction from Will's home life with his long-term partner Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and their problems with her autistic daughter (Poppy Rogers).

After a series of break-ins at their state-of-the-art workspace in Kings Cross, Will follows teenaged freerunner Miro (Rafi Gavron) home to the flat he shares with his mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian refugee. Will is instantly smitten with Amira and the two begin an affair.

The Good
Minghella makes great use of the modern Kings Cross locations, presenting a side of London that hasn't been seen on screen before. It also, rather bizarrely, nicks one of the locations from the recent Demi Moore frightener, Half Light.

The superb ensemble cast is composed almost entirely of Anthony Minghella's mates, since Law, Binoche, Juliet Stevenson and even Ray Winstone have all worked with him before. Binoche is excellent as always and Law is pretty good throughout, at least until his appalling dialogue in the climactic scenes.

The Bad
Initially, Breaking and Entering looks like it's going to be one of those multi-character movies (like Wonderland), so it's a terrible disappointment when the interesting characters and sub-plots (eg Sandy's crush on the cleaner at work; Vera Farmiga's scene-stealing prostitute; Ray Winstone's sympathetic cop) completely disappear around 40 minutes in.

The film is also saddled with a badly written, unconvincing ending that threatens to ruin the film completely. In fact, you're almost better off leaving the cinema ten minutes early and supplying your own ending.

Worth seeing?
Parts of Breaking and Entering are excellent, but parts of it are also very, very bad. So it's something of a mixed bag, but still worth seeing.