FRACTURE

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: foul language, sexual content, violence

Rated:

I watch a lot of courtroom dramas. I have a fair level of knowledge when it comes to how the prosecution works, and I can spot a faulty plot a mile away. Fracture is not a brilliant piece of cinema. It has more illogical moments than one of my dad's tall tales, yet somehow the audience doesn't mind that much, because it is a formidable game of cat and mouse.

Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) knows his wife is having an affair with a local policeman (Billy Burke). It has been going on for quite some time, but this is the first instance that he has ever done anything about it. When his wife (Embeth Davidtz) comes home after an afternoon of swimming and playing with her new boyfriend at a local hotel, Ted calmly shoots her in the head, then fires a series of bullets through the windows to scare the gardeners. Hours later the police are camped on his doorstep, he has not left the house, and the very policeman his wife was seeing has come to attempt to convince him to come out. The case seems fairly cut and dried, with a written and signed confession, and lands on the desk of young Prosecutor Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling). With one foot into an elite private law firm, and no desire to look back, the only reason Willy agrees to take the case is believing it will be a quick sentencing.

But his in and out courtroom appearance is turned into months of trials as Ted revokes his statement and enters a plea of not guilty, intending to represent himself at court. Willy could just hand this one over to a subordinate, but his dislike for Ted and the gall he has at playing psychological games with the prosecution gets under his skin. Even though his girlfriend Nikki (Rosamund Pike) warns her that continuing with the case will jeopardize his placement at her prestigious law firm, Willy is determined to see Ted behind bars for the brutal attempted murder of his wife. That's when the case unravels around him.

There are a lot of illogical moments and plot holes in Fracture, the least of which not being the puzzling relationship between Nikki and Willy. They meet, there are sparks, and immediately she is having him over for Thanksgiving dinner with her family, he is seen leaving her apartment in the middle of the night, and we're left to presume that for no reason other than that she likes a man she has barely known for a week, Nikki is willing to jeopardize her reputation and livelihood for him. I think in the long run, the convoluted and barely-there love story should have been left out. A professional tension between them would have been much more complex. The ending, while ultimately satisfying, takes an amount of suspended disbelief that I seriously doubt would hold up in an actual courtroom. But it's a movie, and as pure entertainment, does its job well.

Hopkins is pure creepiness from beginning to end. Gosling fumbles a bit with the accent but is very good in his dramatic moments, and I had never seen Rosamund Pike in a modern role before, so it was a pleasure to see her stalking legal courtrooms with panache and flair. There is a mild amount of content. Half a dozen f-words make it into the plot, one of them used sexually. It's implied but not shown that Nikki and Willy spend the night together (he is shown getting dressed and leaving the flat, while she pulls on a nightgown). A man commits suicide. A woman is shot in the head; blood spatters and pools on the floor around her. A man is twice physically assaulted.

One of the better things about the plot is its mind games. Ted goes out of his way to pull one over on the police force and district attorney's office, and in the end Willy risks everything to see him brought to justice. There is also a tense moment when you wonder whether or not he will make a criminal legal discussion and plant the evidence he hopes to find. Law & Order fans might find it a bit too melodramatic in the long run, but for casual lovers of courtroom drama, this one hits the spot.