Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Anthony Hopkins, Billy Burke, Rosamund Pike, Fiona Shaw, Cliff Curtis, Embeth Davidtz, Zoe Kazan, David Strathairn
Ted Crawford (Hopkins), a wealthy airplane manufacturer, comes home one day and shoots his wife in the face, causing irreversible brain damage and leaving her in a coma. There is no hope of recovery. Ted is arrested for attempted murder, confesses to the crime, and his conviction seems to be an open and shut case. The case is handled at the district attorney's office by Willy Beachum (Gosling), a hotshot attorney with a 97% conviction rate who is short timing it at the office. He has a higher-paying, more prestigious job waiting for him at a slick Los Angeles firm. Willy figures he can pad his stats and impress his new bosses. We learn soon enough a conviction will not be that simple.
The constitutional right to a speedy trial only seems to happen in movies. In Fracture, Ted is arraigned and his trial starts all within the two-week notice Willy gives his boss. Ted curiously represents himself and is all malevolent smiles as the evidence piles up against him. Then, the case begins to turn. Detective Nunally (Burke), who was on the scene and took Ted's confession, was his wife's lover and thus this throws the entire confession out. Then there is the matter of a missing murder weapon, which Ted somehow disposed of, or did he? Willy is flustered as the case slips away, his new job is in jeopardy before he even starts working, and his current boss, D.A. Joe Lubruto (Strathairn) questions his sloppy lawyering and takes him off the case.
Ted finds he can push Willy's buttons under a façade of benevolence, referring to him condescendingly as "old sport" and his smug belief in not of his innocence, but that Willy won't be able to convict him. Willy begs to be put back on the case just to get a chance to shut the arrogant, rich Ted up and convict him of the attempted murder. Like a chess master, Ted seems to have planned two to three moves ahead of Willy. The case is barely afloat and might be wrapped up just as Willy is scheduled to leave for greener pastures.
Fracture is at its best when depicting the tense cat-and-mouse game between the younger, arrogant Willy and the older, arrogant Ted. We side with Willy because he is on the right side of the law, but we don't necessarily root for him personally. Gosling and Hopkins are effective adversaries and their confrontations never fail to be suspenseful. I have a hard time buying their final showdown, though, even though it leads to satisfying conclusion for all. Would Ted, who carefully and precisely thought his way through his legal strategy, be so reckless with his mouth? Or make a boneheaded decision with his wife's fate that would potentially upend his own legal standing? Or conveniently forget how the double jeopardy clause works? It is as if the wily Ted suddenly went all idiot on us in the final 15 minutes.
Up until that time, Fracture is a quick-moving, stylish courtroom thriller. Hopkins isn't Hannibal Lecter, but his manners and civil façade suggest the malevolence beneath the surface much like Lecter. Gosling undergoes some compelling changes as he grows from cocky lawyer to a guy who reads to Ted's comatose wife at her hospital bed. He learns to care for others, at least to an extent. I also liked the always dependable Strathairn as the D.A. who we know will wind up fully supporting Willy in the end as the voice of reason and conscience.
Despite the plot holes, I still admired Fracture mostly because of the performances and director Hoblit, who has covered legal dramas adeptly in movies like Primal Fear. He is intrigued by the shadowy elements of guilt and innocence presented in Primal Fear and now Fracture. Somehow, my mind dredged up a line from an 80s Charles Bronson movie where Bronson proclaims, "I remember once when legal meant lawful. Now it means a loophole." Hoblit probably thinks the same thing.
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