Breaking
**Seen at the 2022 Atlanta Film Festival.
I’ll be honest that I do not remember the story of Brian Brown-Easley, and how he held two bank workers hostage in 2017 in an attempt to get his VA disability check deposited back into his account; it had been withheld by a university for back payment on college tuition. A Marine veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he relied on that for his ex-wife and his daughter. Faced with homelessness, he saw no other options left, even if it meant he’d never see his daughter again.
Brown-Easley is played by John Boyega in “Breaking,” the tense and riveting thriller from co-writer/director Abi Damaris Corbin. One of the things Boyega does so well is play characters with righteous purposes, and conflicted emotions, whether you’re talking about here, his performance in “Attack the Block,” or as Finn in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy. Here, his character is not just desperate, and conflicted, but mentally troubled- there’s very clearly some PTSD Brown-Easley struggles with. That being said, he’s also someone who clearly does not want he or the bank workers he’s taken hostage- manager Estel (Nicole Beharie) and Rosa (Selenis Leyva)- in this situation. He feels like he has no choice, though; after all, he doesn’t feel like he’s being seen.
Corbin’s directorial approach is very intimate. We follow Brown-Easley during a phone call with his daughter, Kiah (London Covington), the night before, and into the bank, and when the hostage situation starts. She uses close-ups on not only his face, but the other faces, to emphasize the emotional tension the characters are feeling in the moment, and doesn’t really leave the bank until Brian makes a call to a news producer (Connie Britton) to tell his story, and get the attention he needs. The contrast between what the world outside of the bank is doing, versus what is going on inside the bank, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the storytelling here. Why is the news recording this conversation, but not airing it live? Why are the police letting him talk, leaving the hostage negotiator he’s wanted to speak to (played by Michael K. Williams, a force in his final film role) on the sidelines? Is Estel being instructed by the police on the side as to what to do to get her and Rosa out of harm’s way, further isolating Brian? When a lot of these questions are added up, the end result feels inevitable, because everyone seems to have their own agenda, and none of them involve helping Brian, which should have been the only agenda.
The screenplay by Corbin and Kwame Kwei-Armah was built from listening to the recordings available of the situation, and their ability to distill not only the tragic heart of the situation, but also ideas of systemic racism, not taking steps to treat people with mental illness with compassion, and deficiencies in the VA, into a taut 103 minute drama makes “Breaking” all the more impressive as an accomplishment.
