Review: Fracture

A refreshingly simple, Grisham-style legal thriller, Fracture lays out its agenda early on and never feels the need to delve into absurdities or tack on sixteen endings in order to complete its business. Anthony Hopkins stars as Ted Crawford, a man who, despite living in a hilltop mansion, is still apparently going to work every day, which can't be the definition of success for someone his age. We're informed early on that his younger wife (Embeth Davidtz) is having a reckless love affair and seems eager to have the big discussion with her husband rather than quietly put a stop to her activities, as he would prefer. He's a typical Hopkins character endowed with a silent British suffering that's laughably out of place amidst the Grand Guignol of Los Angeles. He's also endowed with that typically Hopkins-style compulsion -- that endless mental finger-drumming that goes on in the head of most of his characters. Early and often, we see him staring at an elaborate mousetrap-style contraption in his home that he apparently built himself.

The whole plot revolves around whether Crawford is actually as smart as he thinks he is, so I won't make a comment on that, lest I give away the store. Upon learning that his wife's paramour is actually a lowly cop, he comes up with an elaborate plan to murder her in the home they share and then have the cop (played by Billy Burke) arrive first on scene. Once arrested, he will dramatically reveal buckets of evidence that the cop and the rich wife were having a torrid affair, which he thinks should be sufficient grounds to have the entire arrest declared inadmissible in court. If it were me, I'd probably think I owed it to myself to put in a couple years in night school researching that before I put my plan into action, but he seems pretty confident about it. Opposing him will be Ryan Gosling, a young hotshot from the D.A.'s office who doesn't need a high-profile, complicated case like this one on the eve of being offered an associateship at a swanky private firm.

It's a quirk of the movie that they continually repeat the private firm's name over and over -- Wooton Sims. "What does this have to do with Wooton Sims?" and "This is Wooton Sims business" is said over and over, perhaps for no other reason than the screenwriters felt that they had synthesized the ultimate name to represent inscrutable, old-moneyed corporatism. The original Wooton and Sims probably made a deal with the French to buy all the timber west of the Mississippi in the mid 1700s, and this is their legacy -- a firm that hires lawyers who look like Rosamund Pike and holds rooftop parties at swanky night spots. Pike plays Gosling's foil -- she wants him to keep his future at Wooton Sims in mind, while he's more concerned about making sure the right person goes away for the attempted murder of the wife. The wife was shot, yes, but she survived and is lingering in a coma. If you don't think that will come into play at some point, I've got some timeshare opportunities I'd like to discuss with you.

The film benefits greatly from the natural talent on display, but I'm mostly thinking of Gosling's performance, not Anthony Hopkins, who seems to be firmly entrenched in coasting mode. I guess you can't blame for not digging deep for what is, at the end of the day, a fairly routine legal thriller, but during some of his jailhouse confrontations with Gosling he almost seems to briefly channel Hannibal Lecter, as if he figures audiences expect that kind of snarling, Lecter sneer and is more than happy to oblige. His character is also self-satisfied to the point of nausea, constantly on the verge of bragging about the fact that he's outsmarted the legal system, which isn't exactly what you'd expect from someone sitting in a jailhouse. At best, he will be tried for murder and acquitted, which isn't going to compel anyone to tag him as a criminal mastermind. Gosling's stock also drops a bit when he can't figure out where the murder weapon is -- it seems pretty obvious, once you realize the route that Hopkins' character is using to escape justice.

Fracture isn't going to win any awards, but it's a good showcase for Gosling, allowing him to run circles around everyone else in the movie, even David Strathairn, who plays his long-suffering boss at the D.A.'s office. It also gives us a good show from Rosamund Pike, who does her best ice queen role since she was the sub-zero MI6 turncoat Miranda Frost in Pierce Brosnan's swansong, Die Another Day. (Who actually believes she would have lost that final knife fight to Halle Berry's character? Give me a break.) Alas, Anthony Hopkins is a different story. As his big Welsh face gets wider and more cracked with wrinkles and his hair gets more and more translucent, he seems to be losing the energy to dive in and make hay with the projects he's offered. The guy who bit down hard on Captain Bligh in Roger Donaldson's much-underrated The Bounty and made us forget that he looks nothing like Nixon seems to have been replaced by a guy who's more than happy to rest on his increasingly distant laurels.