Breaking In

Burt Reynolds plays this old, sarcastic safecracker who meets this young, stupid, lazy guy (Casey Siemaszko) who decided to casually break into the same house and was making a sandwich at the time. For whatever reason - boredom, loneliness - Ernie decides to take Mike under his wing and teach him the ropes.

The early part of the film is them pulling off various low-level safe heists. Robbing a grocery store, a faith-based outreach to the homeless (Ernie figures the head of it is keeping the majority of the cash aside for himself), the proceeds from a big Fourth of July celebration. That's the part I like best, the actual heists, the planning, the mentor stuff. Seeing how Ernie lives his life to enjoy what he steals, without getting caught.

The second half of the movie focuses on how Mike doesn't want to follow Ernie's rules. He's caught up in the romanticism of being a thief, and wants to enjoy the proceeds how he likes. He doesn't want to keep working his dead-end job, even though it's the thing that would provide cover for him having the money to move into a better apartment, buy a car, have a girlfriend with expensive, bizarre tastes. That ends about as well as you'd expect.

My biggest issue with the movie is that Mike isn't very interesting. Not compared to Ernie, anyway, who has the obvious advantage of being played by Burt Reynolds. He's just kind of an idiot. He sort of feels bad about stealing from some people, but not enough to stop. Interested in stealing enough to keep doing it, but not enough to do it well. I think he just really likes the idea of being a safecracker, and despite the fact that Ernie's approach has managed to keep him out of jail recently, Mike would rather ignore the aspects of it that conflict with what he thinks being a thief should be about.