Breaking In (dir. James McTeigue)

Your ability to enjoy James McTeigue's home-invasion thriller "Breaking In" should be broken down into the following parameters: whether or not you have ever seen a home-invasion thriller before. If you're like myself, who have seen numerous films about wannabe assailants attempting to rob the home of a well to-do family, than there's absolutely nothing here to keep you awake. Or, if you fancy seeing your first film of this genre, maybe along with your mom just in time for Mother's day, you'll only enjoy the charismatic charm of lead Gabrielle Union, and be bored senseless by everything else.

For our director, James McTeigue, it's been thirteen long years since his first and best film, "V for Vendetta" hit our movie screens, with this adaptation of Alan Moore's fiercely complicated comic-book text being an unlikely and assuredly subversive offering into the superhero canon. Though in the interim, the Australian director hasn't come anywhere near following in the footsteps of this engaging hit, with offerings that varied from the downright unwatchable (Ninja Assassin, The Raven) to the offensively bland (Survivor). With a mainstay as a director of an array of television shows becoming his day-to-day for the last few years, he returns to the big screen with what he hopes is a original take on the tried and tested home-invasion genre, this time by pitting our de-facto parent trying to break back-in to her home, which has been overcome by a quartet of nefarious criminals. Suffice to say, he falls flat on his face with this interpretation, as if the mundanity of the ensuing drama on screen doesn't send you into a mummified coma, than the expository scenes sure will - and it's all down to the lackluster script and hokey plot devices that create a wholly un-engaing experience.

Gabrielle Union is Shaun, a mother of two on her way to a secluded Wisconsin mansion that she grew up on with her white-collar criminal father. He's seen runned-down in early seen, though apparently this is only suspicious to us and nobody in the family seems to care, so Shaun heads up with son Glover (Seth Carr) and daughter Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) to run interference before the realtor gets there and she can sell it. Unsurprisingly, Shaun's father has transformed their family home into a fortress, designed to keep any nefarious individuals from forcing themselves in. Equipped with a advanced security system- seemingly borrowed from the White house, assorted drones and a lockdown window system, the 25-acre grounds are much more than your original suburban home, and it's clear that Shaun's father - with whom she was estranged - has something to hide.

Before she's even able to order a pizza, a gang of recently paroled convicts take over the house, forcing Shaun into the woods and leaving her two-children locked inside with the de-factor leader of the gang, Eddie (a clearly unhappy with his career, Billy Burke). Though at first, it seems like an interesting premise, subverting the usual clichéd of the home-invasion thriller, as Shaun must break-back in the heavily fortified house to save her children, the filmmaking team of director McTeigue and screenwriter Ryan Engle (Rampage, The Commuter, Non-Stop), soon give up on expanding this plot machination into anything of note, finding their main interest in the derivative exploitation nonsense seen in hundreds of other outings in the genre.

So what do they want? As is so happens, fellow thug and bleach-blonde tweaker Sam (Levi Meaden) has been tipped of that the house has a safe, holding a buck-load of untraceable cash; $4 million to be exact. Under the tutelage of Eddie (Burke), with psycho Mexican Duncan (Richard Cabral) and master-safe cracker Peter (Mark Furze), the rest of the "thriller" sees Shaun trying to outwit the career criminals in order to save her children, with our gang trying to open the safe before the 90 minute window expires and the police are called. It's funny there's always a period of time before the police are called that is staggeringly close to the run time of the film.

Despite some well-orchestrated fight-sequences and the odd moment of wincing nastiness, "Breaking In" fails to live up to it's original premise, and shamefully gives it's star Gabrielle Union little to work with. Her abilities to outwit her counterparts are boiled down to a mothering instinct, and not much else - though it would of been much more interesting if her character development was explored more heavily, and maybe she was a star-Taekwondo student in college or something. Strangely though, our filmmaking team are less interested in backstory and more dependent on the sub-Home Alone antics.

Not the worst film to be released on mother's day, that would a film with the same title as the holiday, which is like a fish-bowl full of sick, though "Breaking In" is unutterably dull and you and your mother deserve so much better.

Rating 1/5.