Written and directed by Anthony Minghella

Starring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn and Rafi Gavrone

120 min. in CinemaScope

Anthony Minghella began his career with two perfectly charming romantic fantasies: Truly Madly Deeply and Mr. Wonderful. With The English Patient, the writer/director tried to fuse the big screen pictorials of David Lean with a schmaltzy, socially-relevant Stanley Kramer message picture.

It didn’t take long for Mr. Minghella to attract Oscar’s attention.

Perhaps I was feeling generous, more than likely it was a chance to escape a Chicago blizzard for three-plus hours, but I enjoyed The English Patient’s unending blast of sentimental effusion. After a couple of overrated adaptations (The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain), Mr. Minghella returns with his first original script since Truly Madly Deeply, his 1991 debut.

Set in contemporary London, Breaking and Entering centers on the lives of two disparate young men: Will (Jude Law), a partner in a landscape architecture firm, drives a sports car, while future cat burglar Miro (Rafi Gavrone) washes them.

Fifteen-year-old Miro and his criminal cohorts have been scoping out Will’s King’s Cross office. With a pair of binoculars and a couple of Jackie Chan stunts, they crack the security code and relieve the place of all its electronic equipment. Knowing that they’ll soon restock, Miro’s crooked uncle advises him to make a return visit.

Miro lives with his mother Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian seamstress growing more and more suspicious of her son’s underworld dealings. The young hoodlum has a heart. He burns a CD of family photos from Will’s laptop and leaves it for him to find during the second burglary.

Will and his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman) run surveillance on the shop from the front seat of Will’s car. There they encounter Vera Farmiga, fresh from Marty’s tutelage in The Departed, as a dippy Russian whore who befriends Will and later steals his wheels.

In a refreshingly credible use of coincidence, Will not only catches wise to Miro’s thievery, he manages to get a suit altered and have an affair with Amira!

Mothers will do anything to protect their children, and Amira goes so far as blackmailing Will in order to keep her son out of jail. This gives Minghella a chance to toy with the notion that mom is just as guilty as her baby boy.

Minghella’s problem is that he doesn’t know when to apply the brakes. The fact that Will’s partner Liv (Robin Wright Penn) is melancholic and unresponsive should have been enough to establish their relationship. Instead, Liv’s 13-year-old, emotionally “troubled” daughter is thrown in for added import. There is also a racially charged, unnecessary subplot involving Sandy and the black cleaning woman he lusts after.

One burning question remains: Was a young Minghella frightened by Kane cameraman Gregg Toland? Not since they discovered panchromatic film stock has there been a movie with this many shallow focus shots.

While a little restraint would have gone a long way, we have all suffered worse violations than Breaking and Entering.

Rating: 1/2

Directed by Dave Meyers

Written by Jake Wade Wall and Eric Bernt

Starring: Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton, Sean Bean and Neal McDonough

83 min. in CinemaScope

Has it really been 20 years since I spent an entire ride home checking my rearview for Rutger Hauer?

Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher answered the oft-posed question, “Aren’t there any films that scare you?” More than a simple slasher epic, The Hitcher is a riveting psychological horror film that genuinely spooked the hell out of me.

I wish that I could speak with more accuracy, but my letterboxed VHS copy was lost in the move and for some unexplainable reason the DVD version is full frame. It’s been years since my last viewing, but if memory serves, C. Thomas Howell agrees to deliver a car from Chicago to San Diego for a drive-away company.

Along the way he picks up John Ryder (Rutger Hauer), a man with neither a past nor future, only his present goal to kill the guy who gave him a ride.

At one point, Jennifer Jason Leigh, a waitress who befriends Howell, is strung up between two trucks, one facing north, the other south. The filmmakers staged a scene where a dummy filled with guts was literally driven apart, but were dissatisfied with the end results. Eventually, they reasoned that nothing they could film would possibly come close to matching the pictures in the viewers’ minds and wisely ended the scene with Ryder’s foot hitting the accelerator.

For those of you who felt cheated by the 1986 version, here’s your chance to experience the disembowelment in CinemaScope and Dolby Digital Surround. Did I mention that Michael “Armageddon” Bay produced?

Gore isn’t the only revision, although I sure do miss that finger in the French fries. This time around, it’s two college students on their way to spring break who pick up the psycho in the rain. Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton are the young couple in love and, in his case, about to be dismembered.

There is also an excess of high energy rock music at the outset that is not exactly conducive to establishing suspense. The director comes by it honestly, though. This is his first big screen foray after a slew of successful music videos.

Had I not seen the original, I probably would have been more impressed with Mr. Bean’s performance. Nothing that Rutger Hauer did in the first version could possibly have been improved.

I wish that I could urge you to rent the original, but you do not want to see a pan-and-scan version of a film that uses ’Scope so well. This retelling, as unnecessary as it is substandard, is strictly for kids born after 1986 or adults without a memory.

Rating: m

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan

Starring: Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Andy Garcia and Alicia Keys

108 min. in CinemaScope

A hefty bounty is placed on a well-connected Vegas superstar that’s about to turn state’s evidence and every hit man (and woman) west of the Mississippi. Somehow, in between the opening scene’s accumulation of suffocating close ups and blurry swish pans, I managed to spot three iconic Hollywood goombahs: Joseph Ruskin (The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, Prizzi’s Honor), David Proval (Tony in Mean Streets) and Alex Rocco (The Godfather’s Moe “He Was Bangin’ Cocktail Waitresses Two At A Time” Green).

Any film that has the savvy to dust off these emblematic faces five minutes in is either going to provide a shrewd ride or evidence that the director spent hours at Central Casting pouring over headshots books. What we have here is the It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of mob movies.

Five-time Vegas Showman of the Year Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) is a coked-out magician who owes more to Frank Sinatra then Ricky Jay. When he gets wise to the target on his forehead, Buddy does what any fink eager to disappear would do: He moves into the most visible penthouse in all of Tahoe.

From the Steven Soderbergh DVCAM visuals to flailing stabs at Tarantinoesque dialogue, everything seems so familiar. The narrative is further hampered by endless (and confusing) dialogue scenes of characters setting up flashbacks. Joe Carnahan’s limp transitions (a character in one scene closes a door, cut to a character in another scene opening a door) would convulse a Film Tech 101 student.

Steal what you will, just don’t summon up masterworks to help add resonance to the spittle you’ve placed your audience neck-deep in. Only a mush-brained hack would dare sully Ennio Morricone’s score to Once Upon a Time in the West by placing it in this diseased environment.

Surprisingly, among the seasoned cast, newcomers Alicia Keys and Common (both recording artists) come off best. Then there’s Ryan Reynolds, a smartass I really like. Once poised to be the next Chevy Chase, after his recent career choices he’s barely approaching Tim Matheson territory. SAG members should pitch in and get him a better agent.

Rating: m