Fracture

Several film critics, including Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune, gave Fracture a good review. Some have even compared it to Hitchcock. This is utter nonsense. Fracture is dreck. It's half-assed work by all involved. SPOILERS AHEAD: Let's see if you can swallow these giant coincidences and plot holes: 1) A man and a woman have an affair, and never get each other's last names. One happens to be a police hostage negotiator who happens to show up when the woman he's been seeing has been murdered. 2) There are two guns on the scene when the body is discovered by police. For the entire length of the movie the investigators never think to check out one of those guns to see if it's the murder weapon. 3) The district attorney's office is given a single long weekend to come up with extra evidence in an attempted murder case when a witness is compromised. Anyone who's ever been involved in any aspect of a real murder case knows how laughable this is. 4) A hospital agrees to a man's Do Not Resuscitate request for his wife the day after the man has been acquitted for attempting to murder her. No one intervenes on behalf of the wife, no family, no friends, no victim's advocates, no one. 5) A man who has planned out a brilliant scheme for getting away with murder, covering every last detail with psychotic foresight, neglects to read the fine print in the Double Jeopardy laws and carelessly re-implicates himself. Anthony Hopkins is sleepwalking through a second rate Hannibal Lecter impersonation here. Every plot point is sloppy and rushed (how about jumping in bed with your boss the night after you are hired? lol) Ryan Gosling, a fine actor, is wasted. This movie's best attribute is that it makes a good primer on how not to write a legal thriller.

I'd read a few reviews which mentioned that the film seemed overlong, laboured, poorly acted, full of clichés, etc. But I went to see it anyway - and was quite pleasantly surprised. The plot, whilst not exactly original, was strong enough to hold the attention all the way through. And I enjoyed having a situation where the 'good guy' was an unsympathetic character. In all, I thought the performances - particularly those of Hopkins and Gosling - were excellent... Hopkins especially. I have to admit that, with a few exceptions (The World's Fastest Indian and Proof amongst them) I've never rated him very highly as an actor. I must be one of the few people who thought he was miscast in The Silence of the Lambs: I thought he hammed it up so much that it detracted from the sense of menace he was supposed to convey. Not so in this film. Here, that sense is very genuine and palpable. Excellently done. My only criticism, I suppose, is that I twigged the ending about half-way through, which rather spoilt it. Which isn't to say that it's necessarily obvious. There was one scene, though, which I think gave the game away. Maybe they should have cut it. Despite that, though, it was still well worth the money for me. A very entertaining film.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) is a millionaire aviation expert who's found out his wife is having an affair with a detective. He shoots her in cold blood and calculatingly sets about removing all the evidence linking him to the crime. Nevertheless, he is arrested and charged with her attempted murder. But he decides to start playing a series of games with hotshot young attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) the man who's meant to be putting him away. But Ted didn't get rich for nothing and he starts using his brilliant brain to manipulate the legal system and turn all the evidence in his favour. When it looks like he's won, Willy has to do everything in his power to really let him sink his teeth in. Fracture is a thriller that's been getting some pretty rave reviews, and it's by no means an awful film, maybe just somewhat over-rated. It's a clever idea for a film, and it works out quite interestingly, but a little far fetched and unbelievable (i.e. Hopkins drawing attention in court to his wife having an affair, giving him a great motive for killing her.) Because the plot is so slovenly, the narrative flow is really lost by the end and it's all got a little boring. On the performances front, Hopkins just regurgitates his Hannibal Lecter routine over again, his character coming off as a little autistic. Gosling, bless him, tries hard but over-acts and comes off as hammy. The film boasts quite a colourful supporting cast, but they can't really liven things up any more. There are some fine points to rave about the film but there's a lot of negative stuff too and it's hard to see why it's got such a riotous applause. **

The character played by Anthony Hopkins tells a story in the film to Ryan Gosling. The story is about sorting eggs on a farm when he was a boy and about putting aside 300 eggs that all had minute cracks or imperfections. The moral is that everything has a weakness if you look closely enough. Hopkins is using the story to warn Gosling that his near perfect conviction record is about to be tested like never before. I caught an advance screening of 'Fracture' and am counting myself among the lucky. 'Fracture' showcases two terrific performances. The first is Ryan Gosling who plays a hot shot Assistant District Attorney on the verge of joining a very lucrative private law firm. He's only got one case left to handle and, although it looks like a slam dunk on paper, he'll soon find it to be a bit more formidable than he first thought. The second great performance is Sir Anthony Hopkins. Stealing every scene he's in with charm, humour and menace, Hopkins turns in one of his most enjoyable performances of recent years. Hopkins plays the accused in Gosling's last case and goes out of his way to give Gosling a very bad day. The battle of wills between the two leads is central to the movie and their combat is electrifying. One of the main questions in the movie is the location of the murder weapon. The film quite explicitly shows the crime of the film and how it is carried out in the first ten minutes of the movie. It seemed obvious to me where the gun was (although my friends told me after the film they had no idea). For my part, knowing where the gun was didn't hurt the film at all because although Gosling's battle to solve the case and get a conviction are certainly a core part of the film, 'Fracture' works better as a character study. Both leads are over-flowing with pride. Both believe themselves to be as flawless as the eggs from the story are supposed to be, but both will come to realize that they have micro-fractures too. This movie is about their arrogance and ultimately about how they deal with the discovery that perfection is a little more elusive than they thought. 'Fracture' shows all seven deadly sins at work and places Pride as the deadliest -- all else springs from it. 'Fracture' has a great score, a terrific script and dynamic characters who are believable in everything they do. This is a rich and highly enjoyable film. I fear it might get lost in the shadow of huge summer blockbusters like Spiderman 3 which is really a shame -- totally engaging little gems like this are why I love movies. 'Fracture' is well worth your time and the price of admission.