Fracture: Movie & DVD Review (2007)

Sprained.

The most difficult movies to review aren't those you love and certainly not those you hate, but those that leave you saddled with ambivalence. Since you can't get on your high horse to praise them or, for that matter, to kneecap them, any enthusiasm or dialogue the movie in question might have generated dies at the hands of the movie itself.

The new Gregory Hoblit film, "Fracture," is just such a movie.

With the exception of its ending, which offers a passable twist, very little about this courtroom suspense thriller is remarkable or reproachable.

It has a fine cast in Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, Rosamund Pike and David Strathairn, but since every one of them has been better in superior movies, nothing they do here is worth getting excited about. From Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers’ script, “Fracture” is slick and glossy, yes, but it's a middle-of-the-road potboiler all the way.

The film stars Hopkins as sociopath Ted Crawford, a wealthy engineer who begins the movie with a taste for murder. Aware that his wife, Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz), is having an affair with Detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke), Ted comes home early from a business trip to make sure she ends it. To do so, he puts a bullet through her head--then several bullets through a few surrounding windows--and then he confesses to the shooting, which didn’t kill Jennifer, who now is in coma. (All of this is revealed in the trailer.)

Enter Willy Beachum (Gosling), an ambitious young lawyer in the D.A.’s office who enjoys a “97 percent conviction rate” and who, as this new case unfolds, has just been recruited by a top law firm in Southern California.

Before leaving for that job, Beachum agrees to take this case and to wrap it up quickly. After all, with Crawford refusing counsel so he can represent himself in court--and with the man’s own signed confession in hand--Beachum doesn’t exactly foresee any problems in getting a conviction for attempted murder.

Not that he's particularly paying attention, which is a good reason why everything for him goes so sour. Turns out the murder weapon never was fired. Worse for Beachum is that Crawford gave his confession to the very detective who was sleeping with his wife, which Beachum didn't know and which renders the man's admission inadmissible in court. What ensues is Beachum's gradual unraveling, with the slyly evil Crawford enjoying the implosion--at least until it starts to affect him.

Scenes between Hopkins and Gosling have a clipped edge that recall scenes between Hopkins and Jodie Foster in "Silence of the Lambs"--and that’s no coincidence. Hoblit wants Hopkins to evoke elements of Hannibal Lecter, which he does by employing Lecter’s sleazy leer and cutting wit. In so doing, Hopkins’ performance becomes disappointingly self-referential but also, curiously enough, the best part of the show.

With Strathairn wasted as Beachum’s boss, Gosling coasting after his Academy Award-nominated performance in "Half Nelson" and especially with material this average, watching a first-rate actor like Hopkins do a second-rate riff on his most famous character can’t help but generate at least some energy and interest.

Grade: C