He’s not robbing anybody.
Sure, that’ll be a hard line to buy for some. After all, Brian Brown-Easley did walk into a Georgia Wells Fargo branch and threaten to blow the place up. He did take two women hostage. And he definitely wants money.
But it’s his money, Brian says. He’s asking for his $892 disability check from the Veterans Affairs program—a check that the VA unfairly took. Criminal? He’s the victim, Brian insists. And he wants to tell the world why.
Brian works two jobs, but it’s not enough: He needs the check to eat, to pay his rent. He needs it to buy his little girl a puppy. He’s tried to get the disability check through regular channels. He’s tried to iron out the misunderstanding. But wherever he turns, he runs into dead-eyed bureaucrats who give him another roll of red tape.
“You gonna have me on the streets,” he tells one VA rep. “I won’t be able to feed myself.”
The VA rep simply hands him a pamphlet: “Homelessness and You.” And when Brian refuses to leave the office, he’s escorted out in handcuffs.
In that moment—the moment he was wrestled to the floor in that VA’s office—Brian decided that he’d run out of reasonable options. He was done playing nice. It was time for a more drastic step.
He feels bad about the whole thing. And he knows—well knows—the chances of him walking out of the bank with his money is slim indeed. Probably, he won’t walk out at all.
But he’s determined to have his say. Because for Brian, the soft-spoken former Marine, quiet time’s over. He’s going to make sure the world hears him.
First off, the obvious: Threatening to blow up a bank is never a good idea, no matter how badly you feel like you’ve been mistreated by the system.
Still, it’s hard to imagine a more considerate would-be bomber.
Most of Brian’s early conversation with his hostages—a teller, Rosa; a manager, Estel—involves the word sorry. And he is. He doesn’t want to scare or even inconvenience them. When a customer calls up asking about a loan, Brian takes down her name and number and promises that someone will get back to her. And even as he tells the world outside that he’s going to kill everyone inside the bank (which consists of just the three of them), he promises Estel and Rosa that they will absolutely walk out alive. “If I die today, I die alone,” he says.
Brian also tries to pass on some valuable lessons to his daughter—even in the midst of these difficult circumstances. “Just do right by people,” he tells his little girl, Kiah, over the phone. “Wherever you go, you treat people good.”
The people around Brian can see the good in Brian, too. It’s a warped goodness, perhaps, but many seem to understand his frustration. Both hostages seem to feel compassion for their quiet captor. Hostage negotiator Eli Bernard, who’s also a former Marine, commiserates with Brian over the sorry state of the VA.
And while Eli might be just doing his job in that commiseration—telling Brian what he wants to hear—it seems to go beyond that, at least to some extent. “I do this day in and day out, and I know a good man when I see one,” he tells Brian’s ex-wife, Cassandra. “Your husband’s a good man.”
Estel texts her son during her captivity. “Mom may have to leave this world for the next one because God sent for me early,” she writes in part, encouraging him to be strong and to look after “your Gramma and your dad.”
Brian, too, is a believer. He brought a Bible into the bank with him, and he uses it to pray with his daughter, Kiah, over the phone. He recites some verses from Psalm 91, apparently from the NIV translation: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest,” he begins, rolling through a couple more verses before saying “Amen.” (“Thank you for praying with me, Baby,” he tells Kiah afterward, wiping tears from his eyes. “I needed that.”)
Brian brought in a necklace with a wooden cross hanging from it as well. He tells his hostages that he doesn’t pray often, but he begins to talk to them about a “book” he’s been reading before they’re interrupted.
Eli and Brian talk about Brian’s ex, Cassandra. When Eli asks Brian if there’s another woman whom Eli could contact for him, Brian says no. “I had but one deep cut in my life, and I married her,” Brian says.
We see Brian shirtless once.
We see Brian wrestled down in the VA’s office, shouting and screaming as he’s pinned to the floor. He brandishes the button to his apparent bomb, threatening to push it if his demands are not met. We learn that he served as a Marine in Afghanistan. And while he wasn’t shot, he was hurt. (Breaking is based on a true story, and the real Brian Brown-Easley suffered debilitating back pain that stemmed from his time in the military.)
Brian exhibits signs of mental illness, and he tells one of his hostages that his own brother has “put out a hit on me,” saying he’s worth $20,000. (“He part of some secret society, some cult like that,” he adds.) Though normally soft-spoken, he can grow quite agitated, terrifying his hostages.
When someone knocks on the bank door loudly, the three people inside imagine it’s a gun being fired. Brian and Rosa hit the floor, and Brian—apparently without thinking—crawls over and covers Rosa’s torso with his own body, as if trying to protect her. (After they realize that the noises weren’t gunshots at all, a mortified Brian apologizes to Rosa several times.)
[Spoiler Warning] Brian believes he likely won’t survive the day, and he says so often. And indeed, he’s proven right: A sniper shoots and kills Brian. The movie doesn’t show us the moment of the bullet’s impact: Indeed, it focuses on other, more poignant aspects of the instant. Estel’s forearm is speckled with Brian’s blood. The walls of the bank are freckled with it, too. Only when a retrieval robot is sent in to snip Brian’s backpack away from his body do we see significant blood, pooling around Brian’s still-mostly-unseen body. Even when we get a glimpse of some black-and-white security footage, the corpse is blurred, and the movie’s camera cuts away before the security camera zeroes in on the body.
Two f-words and one use of the crude military acronym “FUBAR.” We also hear four uses of the s-word and plenty of other profanities, including “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “n–ga.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
Brian smokes, and we see him doing so at the beginning of the movie. He asks Eli for a pack of cigarettes during the hostage standoff, which Eli gets for him.
Over the phone, Cassandra asks Brian if he’s been taking his medication.
If Brian is Breaking’s protagonist askew, its prime villains are more nebulous: racism and bureaucracy.
As mentioned, Brian doesn’t expect to get out the bank alive. One reason? Because, he believes, of the color of his skin. He believes that—in this part of Georgia, at least—systematic racism makes life more difficult for Blacks. And the movie subtly underlines those concerns.
Brian’s missing VA check gives us another issue to ponder. In real life, the VA will cover tuition for vets taking higher-education classes. But the organization can (and does) recoup funds directly from the vet if the vet stops going to class. That’s the crux upon which Brian’s crisis teeters—and (according to the movie), one made in error.
In trying to recover that money, Brian is, for the most part, consistent and honorable in his demands. “I don’t want the bank’s money,” he tells Rosa. “I just want the cash that those people took from me.”
But as the crisis wears on, Estel encourages him to let her transfer the funds into his account from the bank itself.
“Let me put what you’re owed,” she tells him. “I need you not to die. Not today.”
He finally acquiesces, which technically puts him on the wrong side of one of the Ten Commandments. But like all the other issues in this section, the issue is a bit more complex than can be simply and swiftly filed away.
Breaking is based on a true story—though the movie does take some liberties with it. Its makers have run Brown-Easley’s story through a narrative sifter, making it less a straightforward docudrama and more a dramatic thriller. Here, Brian (played memorably by Star Wars’ John Boyega) becomes an everyman who’s run over by an unfeeling system, a victim of overstuffed files and overlooked forms. He’s not alone, the movie suggests: But he is just desperate enough, and unhinged enough, to do something about it.
It’s always dicey to make a hero out of someone threatening to blow up a bank, of course. Brian may be polite, but we should never lose sight of the fact that he’s committing several felonies. Anyone who decides to watch this thriller will have to navigate some language concerns, too.
That said, Breaking also shows restraint. This is not a gratuitous film. It leans into the issues that it comments upon. The story here focuses on people. And it dips its narrative toe into faith—reminding us that even when the world around us feels oh so broken, we can still seek rest in the Most High.
The title Breaking points to both the breaking of a man and the breaking story he triggers. But the movie itself shows fewer cracks than you might expect.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
