Fracture has more than a passing similarity to The Silence of the Lambs, the movie that gave Anthony Hopkins his Oscar and made him a brand name nearly a quarter-century into his film career. Once again, Hopkins is playing a smarter-than-your-average-bear killer, and he's locked in a battle of wits and wills with a young antagonist sporting a noticeable accent. This time, the co-star is Ryan Gosling, and the accent is a quasi-southern drawl and not that of his native Canada.
Hollywood is always looking for young men who can carry films, and Fracture is the first real test of whether Gosling can grow into that sort of actor. Save for The Notebook, which was a surprise hit, Gosling has mostly made his name in smaller films such as The Believer and last year's Half Nelson, which netted him an Oscar nomination. It's also noteworthy that the movie was directed by Gregory Hoblit, who directed Primal Fear, the film debut of the Gosling of the '90s, Edward Norton. I think this film will help Gosling; he holds his own with Hopkins (though the movie is at its best in the all-too-few scenes that feature the men together) and displays effortless charisma and genuine likability. Too bad that the movie doesn't have a script, and in particular a last act, worthy of the talent in front of the camera.
Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, an airline executive of some sort who we see at the film's outset spying on his wife, who is at a motel with her lover. He heads home, confronts his wife calmly when she arrives, and shoots her in the head (she's not quite dead, though, a fact which will become important later). When the police arrive, there is a brief tussle during which Crawford appears to confess to the crime. The movie isn't yet 15 minutes old at this point, so Hopkins is obviously up to something.
Gosling is Willy Beachum, a prosecutor who has been successful enough to draw the attention of a major white collar firm (Gosling looks barely old enough to be a law school graduate, let alone someone with a long enough track record to be getting elite jobs, but no matter). The Crawford case comes up, and Beachum figures it's another easy conviction to cap his life in public service. Crawford insists on representing himself in court, which Beachum sees as simply more evidence that he has nothing to worry about, despite the nagging mystery of why the police haven't been able to locate the murder weapon even though it's known that Crawford never left his house after the shooting.
The trial gets under way with Beachum asking rote questions of his key witness, the detective who confronted Crawford at the crime scene. Crawford doodles on a note pad during the direct examination, but waits till his cross to spring his surprise on the ill-prepared Beachum: the detective is the same man Crawford's wife was having the affair with, and he was present during Crawford's "confession," an obvious violation of policy. The confession is tossed, and without any murder weapon, Beachum's case is suddenly in very serious trouble. This is a problem both for his prospective new employer, which can't very well hire someone coming off an embarrassing high-profile disaster; and for the district attorney's office, which doesn't look kindly on mistakes either.
Beachum's cat-and-mouse game with Crawford comprises the second half of the film. Watching Gosling portray Beachum's evolving moral sense is the best part of Fracture, as the lawyer goes from overconfidence, to alarm at the damage the Crawford case can do to his career, to a genuine sense of wanting to do the right thing for the sake of the victim and the need to take Crawford off the streets. The film is basically a two-man show, although Billy Burke does a good job as the humiliated detective; and David Straitharn, suddenly looking like he's ready for grandfather parts, does his avuncular thing as the district attorney. We also get eye candy in the form of Rosamund Pike as Gosling's would-be supervisor at the white collar firm. She's not especially believable as a legal eagle, though, and her brief affair with Beachum adds exactly zero to the plot.
What everybody wants to see at the end is how Crawford finally gets nailed, and this is where the balance on Fracture tilts from "decent little legal drama" to "if this was Law & Order, they'd be in rewrite right now." It's been established that both Crawford and Beachum are smart cookies, but his eventual comeuppance is attributable to a technicality it's hard to believe Crawford would have ignored, and the mystery of the murder weapon is one that at least one character and probably several of them should have thought of almost right off the bat.
If Gosling goes on to become a major star, Fracture will probably be remembered as a minor stepping stone along the way, a sign that he can stand up to a legend and acquit himself well. If he doesn't fulfill his evident promise, the film is destined to be an afterthought.
I never thought the day would come when I could watch a Will Smith movie and forget that it was "Will Smith", the way we can see others actors disappear into their parts. But lo and behold, if that moment hadn't arrived before now, it most certainly has with the release of The Pursuit of Happyness. There aren't a lot of surprises in this film and it veers toward melodrama more than I'd like, but Smith holds it all together, with some help from a certain family member.