A mildly compelling courtroom drama, Gregory Hoblit´s Fracture reels us in with a can´t-miss premise only to slowly lose us over the course of the rest of the film.
Terrific leads – ideally cast as cat-and-mouse opponents – and a game supporting cast keep things interesting for the most part, but unnecessary subplots and unconvincing legal logic derail a potentially top-notch suspense thriller.
Pic recalls director Hoblit´s 1996 Primal Fear, which had similar strengths and weaknesses and an equally muddled outcome.
Anthony Hopkins stars as Ted Crawford, an engineer whose job it is to find the weak points in structures. We begin the film as he leaves work, goes home, and shoots his cheating wife in the head.
A hostage situation develops, and a negotiator is sent in – Rob Nunally (Billy Burke), who just happened to be sleeping with the victim. In any event, Crawford is caught, admits to the crime, and spends the rest of the film playing mindgames with prosecutor Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), attempting to break his case on shaky legal grounds and get away with murder (well, attempted murder – wife ends up in a coma).
Such a great premise – how can this miss? Somehow, it does. Gosling´s personal subplots – especially a romance with Rosamund Pike – take up far too much screen time and detract from the main story; in fact, whenever focus is taken off Hopkins (which happens frequently in the second act), the film suffers greatly.
On top of this, credibility is strained and broken under the weight of questionable legalities; my favorite is when the judge throws out Crawford´s confession on conjecture alone – shouldn´t it be proven that Nunally was sleeping with his wife and the confession was coerced? Nah, let´s just take Crawford´s word for it.
The ending heaps these on to the point of unintentional comedy, topping it off with that old double jeopardy situation – has this ever happened in reality? A murderer confessing to their crime after being found innocent because they can´t be tried again?
Hopkins and Gosling are both terrific, though their characters are too shallowly written; the mistakes these characters make in order for the plot to move forward feels forced. Supporting cast is good, in particular Burke, David Strathairn as Beachum´s boss, and Cliff Curtis as the cop on the case.
Film is polished, but the script is rarely credible, and the direction isn´t fluid or suspenseful enough for us to overlook this; rarely does a thriller succeed when we´re given ample time to think about the plot.
Premise is somewhat reminiscent of Elio Petri´s 1971 Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, which featured Gian Maria Volontč as a police inspector who murders his mistress, leaves clues behind, and waits the rest of the film to be caught.
