This is a review that was originally posted in a Mini-Review Round-Up. As of this writing Broken can be streamed on Tubi, Pluto, and Plex.

This is a film that, aside from being the opening selection during Critics’ Week at Cannes and winning the Grand Prix at the Odessa Film Festival, was also nominated for nine British Independent Film Awards, A European Film Award and two awards at the London Film Festival; so it made a bit of hay that made me intrigued to see it.

I am glad to say that after all that hullabaloo I was not let down in the least, quite the opposite; Broken is the first great new film of the year that I’ve had the pleasure of watching. It’s an intricately told and layered tale that with many narrative threads, characters crossing paths, that could get trite, but is instead invigorating and riveting.

There are frames within the film and excellent persistent use of cross-cutting that acutely accesses the proper emotional tenor that is sought, which finds the commonality in these characters so frequently at odds. In certain ways, it’s like an externalized version of We Need to Talk About Kevin, in terms of the way it’s cut together and how the actors have to truly use the edit to great affect.

It’s what I like to term a “collision course narrative,” which is a tale wherein there’s a suspenseful foreboding to the meeting of certain events that you feel, and it’s perhaps the best example of such I’ve seen. It’s also a film that starts strong and never really lets go. 

Watch Broken, it is an absolutely exquisite piece of cinema.