Sir Anthony Hopkins puts on his best Hannibal the Cannibal as the assays the role of a husband who plans the perfect crime. Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling goes up against Hopkins as the cocky district attorney assigned to try the case.
Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) is a successful aeronautic engineer that enjoys puzzles. He finds out that his wife (Embeth Davidtz) is having an affair. She comes home one night and Ted shoots her in the face. He calmly calls the cops and awaits their arrival. When the cops arrive they send in one man (Billy Burke) who freaks out when he sees the victim – his lover and also Ted’s wife.
Meanwhile hotshot attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) is about to abandon the district attorney’s offices for more lucrative lawyering grounds associated with a big firm. He’s assigned one last case and thinks it will be an easy one since there’s a signed confession. However, it turns out to be Ted’s case and it will be anything but easy as Ted has a few tricks up his sleeves.
One can’t help but think of Anthony Hopkins in his signature role except this time he’s not eating up the other characters. However, he still has the cunning and intelligence that we associate with our famous silver screen cannibal. So that means that Hopkins is at his icy best and his performance is quite good. He has ample support from Ryan Gosling who starts off the film as a somewhat slimy attorney and ends up caring for the victims of the crime.
I guess it depends on how many of these types of films that you’ve seen but I spotted the major clue to the mystery and spent the rest of the film waiting for Willy to catch up. I should say that it still didn’t dampen my enjoyment of the grand performances by Hopkins and Gosling. The mystery is put aside when there’s some romantic entanglements with Willy and Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike), another attorney at the swanky firm that Willy’s trying to work his way into.
I suppose that these scenes are necessary but you want the show to get back to Hopkins and Gosling’s story and the conflict between the two. It’s a good game of cat and mouse between two wonderful actors.
Fracture is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features are rather light. They include 33 minutes of deleted scenes and two alternate endings. The first ending changes things around a bit but I still preferred the ending that’s in the final film. You can see how they pieced the theatrical ending from this first attempt. The second ending just adds a little bit to the first alternate ending.
Fracture is a good time killer and is bolstered by fine performances from both Hopkins and Gosling. The mystery is a bit easy to figure out if you know what you’re looking for, but like Willy you have to find the evidence that will put the killer away.
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