Fracture

Anthony Hopkins is back as a brilliantly calculating murderer in this thriller about a millionaire, Ted Crawford (Hopkins), who kills his wife (Embeth Davidtz) in cold blood because she’s having an affair, and the hot shot assistant D.A. (Ryan Gosling) who thinks he’s picking up an open-and-shut case only to find that he’s walked into a legalistic trap.

Typically enough the plot (both the murderer’s and the film’s rests on a very large coincidence, namely that the wife’s lover is also the arresting officer but this is such a well-crafted script and director Gregory Hoblit keeps the mood intense and carefully measured, splendidly realizing Crawford’s demented manipulations that no-one’s going to be much bothered by it.

Hopkins has no problem delivering cold but charming menace and if Ryan Gosling seems a little too youthfully hip as an assistant D.A., he nevertheless does a respectable job of embodying Crawford’s naive adversary. Had there been a stronger female presence (Rosamund Pike gets a bit a of showing as a corporate whore and Embeth Davidtz’s performance is largely limited to the film’s beginning), Fracture could have been an exemplary modern film noir, but as it is, it recall the heyday of the genre as it relies more on moral ambiguity and well-drawn characters than, as so many thrillers do today, ludicrous plot twists and over-the-top action sequences.

 

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