Considering the star power John Boyega currently possesses, it speaks to his integrity as an actor that he is currently acting in projects as low-profile but honorably conceptualized as Abi Damaris Corbin’s Breaking. The film tells the tragic true story of 33-year-old mentally ill Iraq War veteran Brian Brown-Easley (Boyega), who threatened to detonate a bomb in his local branch of Wells Fargo Bank in Marietta, Georgia in July 2017. He did this in order to convince the US Department of Veterans Affairs to pay him his regularly scheduled $892 disability paycheck, which that month had inexplicably not been paid to him, so that he could avoid losing his $25-per-night hotel room and sleeping on the streets as a result.
In Breaking’s retelling of events, and unusually for a hold-up scenario like this, Brown-Easley orders most of the staff and all of the customers to evacuate the bank, leaving him with branch employees Estel Valerie (Nicole Beharie) and Rosa Diaz (Selenis Leyva) as his only hostages. The situation looks as though it may be well on its way to being resolved with the arrival of cool-headed hostage negotiator Eli Bernard (the late Michael Kenneth Williams, in a powerful final performance) on the scene.
Sidney Lumet’s 1975 true-story hostage drama Dog Day Afternoon casts a long and illustrious shadow over Breaking. Yet there are key differences between the two films. Whilst the motivation of Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino), the protagonist of Lumet’s film, to rob a Brooklyn branch of the Chase Manhattan bank was to get as much money as possible in order to pay for gender reassignment surgery for his partner, Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon), Brown-Easley is here portrayed as only wanting to secure the meager disability paycheck which he feels the federal government has wrongly withheld from him.
Moreover, whilst there is plenty of humor in Dog Day Afternoon, the tone of Breaking is unremittingly sad and somber. The viewer really feels for Brown-Easley and his plight, particularly in the current era of skyrocketing inflation wherein many people are finding themselves similarly challenged to him in terms of paying for day-to-day essentials. This very human treatment of the film’s subject possibly stems from the fact that Corbin is herself the daughter of a veteran who has had several frustrating dealings with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Boyega imbues the role with real sympathy, turning a protagonist who could have been very unattractive due to his use of the threat of violence to get his demands met into a figure who is easy to empathize with and likable. He is helped to do this by a sensitive screenplay from Corbin and her co-writer, esteemed British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah.
Breaking showcases a very good working dynamic between Corbin and Boyega which enables them to both highlight the tension of the situation the film is depicting through their respective roles. Corbin handles the scene near the start of the film in which Brown-Easley first walks into the bank particularly efficiently, setting an appropriately tense tone for the scenes that are to follow. Her strong work behind the camera is bolstered by some very effective shallow-focus cinematography from Doug Emmett (Sorry to Bother You, I Care a Lot). The viewer is also kept on edge by the way in which Boyega keeps suddenly shifting the tone of Brown-Easley’s voice from softly spoken to loud and abrasive. Overall, Breaking is a moving and affecting hostage drama that asks some important questions about the holes in the United States’ social safety net and the lack of care modern society gives to military veterans upon their return to civilian life.
The post Breaking appeared first on Spectrum Culture.