Fracture
Studio: New Line
Rated: R
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling
Director: Gregory Hoblit
WorkNameSort: Fracture
Our Rating: 4.00
Fracture may be ‘justâ?� a courtroom thriller, but it’s surely the craftiest and most intelligent one in years. Ryan Gosling, continuing to top one exquisite performance with another, plays hotshot prosecutor Willy Beachum, who’s about to be promoted to one of the top law firms in the country. He just has one pesky case to take care of before leaving his comparatively small firm: a slam-dunk prosecution of Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), whom we’ve just seen shoot his wife in the face and confess to her attempted murder. Little does the overconfident Beachum know that he’s but one puppet in a grand scheme orchestrated by Crawford. Not your average psychopath, this one is a genteel, erudite, NPR-quoting aeronautics engineer; even if it seems like Hopkins is just doing the Hannibal Lecter thing again, he’s clearly having a blast and so is the audience. Also forgive that one-last-assignment cliché that instigates so many inferior action films; this is an intricately plotted, intensely involving and superbly acted psychological study that should raise the bar for the next plodding Grisham adaptation.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2007.