Fracture

Director: Gregory Hoblit
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Bill Burke, Cliff Curtis, Bob Gunton
Running Time: 113 min.
Rating: R

**1/2 (out of ****)

Sometimes it's fun to see great actors "slumming it," so to speak, in mainstream popcorn movies. Watching Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling in Gregory Hoblit's legal potboiler Fracture isn't one of those times. Okay…maybe it is. Just a little. But that doesn't make this a good movie. I enjoy writing reviews but this time I was tempted instead of a review to post an interview with someone I know who's a lawyer. I'd have him watch Fracture, then ask about all the ridiculous events that occur throughout the course of the film and the likelihood of anything even close to them ever occurring in our legal system. That would probably be missing the point though.

This movie is just supposed to give us a good time and despite having one of the most poorly conceived scripts of the year, I could actually see how many may enjoy it. The 117 minutes fly by, it doesn't take itself too seriously and the actors appear to be having a good time with the material (or at least one of them is). In a way this could be thought of as one of the funniest comedies of the year since the events depicted in the film are so wildly implausible and over-the-top all you can really do is laugh. I know I did. Many times. However, the movie is ultimately too stupid for me to give it a recommendation and be able to look at myself in the mirror tomorrow morning. I'm all for checking your brain at the door and suspending disbelief when watching a movie, but this one pushes it past the limit, even for me.

Anthony Hopkins is Ted Crawford, an eccentric structural engineer in Los Angeles who upon discovering his wife (Embeth Davidtz) is having an affair, shoots her in the face. Assigned to prosecute Crawford's case is young hotshot attorney Willy Beachum (Gosling), who's on his way out of the public sector and on to a job for a prestigious civil law firm. This is his last order of business and should be nothing more than a walk in the park with a signed confession and a murder weapon. Or so he thinks. Crawford has already put into motion a brilliant (but in reality stupid and implausible) plan to frame his wife's lover (Billy Burke) for the murder. Without revealing too much lets just say his plan involves him correctly anticipating a series of events before he commits the crime that Nostradamus himself wouldn't be able to predict with any degree of accuracy.

Luckily for the film, Hopkins is in the role so anything he does, no matter how ridiculous it seems, comes off looking absolutely brilliant. I won't even try to imagine the train wreck this movie could have been without him. I will give the film credit for having the sense to actually show Crawford shooting his wife and leave no mystery at all as to his guilt right away. An even stupider movie (believe it or not, they exist) would have created some shadow of doubt as to whether he actually committed the crime. At least we know he did it and the rest of the film can be spent watching Hopkins and Gosling face off, which unfortunately isn't as thrilling as you likely imagined it to be. Crawford commits himself to finding Willy's "weak spot" and exploiting it. Needless to say, he doesn't have too tough a time.

Since this is essentially a courtroom drama we're treated to some hilarious scenes of Crawford representing himself at the trial. Whenever I watch the news and hear a defendant in some kind of murder case is representing themselves, I have to laugh. If you've ever seen something like that (for example the 1993 trial of subway gunman Colin Ferguson) you know what a joke it makes of our legal system. Hopkins is very entertaining here but unfortunately the reality sets in that he must bring some degree of credibility to Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers silly screenplay. The judge lets him do some things in this courtroom that are just so absurd and unbelievable that I was rolling on the floor with laughter. If you're ever on accused of murder just pray this judge gets your case, or better yet, that Pyne and Gers write the script for your trial.

Those flaws would be fine if the film didn't phone it in when it came to establishing Gosling's Willy as a human being you actually care about. There's an utterly pointless and actually somewhat annoying sub-plot involving an office romance with an attractive lawyer (played by Rosamund Pike) training him for his new position at the firm. She doesn't want his last case in the public sector to turn into an embarrassment for her and the powers that be responsible for his hiring. Oh, and she wants to sleep with him. I mention it as an aside because that's exactly how the movie treats it. Since they're two good looking people who happen to work together they must have sex. There isn't even the slightest attempt to establish anything that resembles a real relationship between them unless you count their lusty stares at one another for minutes at a time. The writers, to steal a quote from Julie Gianni in Vanilla Sky, treat her as nothing more than a "f*ck buddy."

Not helping matters is that Pike, while beautiful, is a black hole of charisma, nearly sucking the life out of every scene in which she appears. The only time the film comes remotely close to giving us anything of interest related to this romance is when they go to her parents' house. It's here where the writers bizarrely choose to give one of the few intelligent lines of dialogue in the entire film to her father (Bob Gunton), who's a civil court judge. David Strathairn is completely wasted as Willy's superior who's trying to take Willy off the case when he starts fumbling it big time. They could have hired a member the catering crew to play the role and no one would have noticed. In fact, it probably would have been a lot cheaper.

This film doesn't really contain any shocking surprises (at least I wasn't surprised by anything that happened) and not nearly as much suspense as I expected. After all, it is tough generating suspense when the characters are all really just agents for carrying out the increasingly ludicrous developments in the screenplay. While Hopkins looks like he's having the time of his life and at least knows what kind of movie he's in, Gosling plays this dead serious and fares far worse. He thinks this is Half Nelson in a courtroom. I didn't care for that film, but at least the material wasn't below him. What's fascinating about Gosling is even though he's one of our best young actors he's yet to make a great movie. If he hopes to achieve that goal, these are exactly the kind of roles he should NOT be taking, as they don't play to any of his strengths as an actor. He excels when given a character with some life or depth to him.

If you approach this film in the right mindset (or lack of one) you'll have a good time since Hopkins is a real hoot. You may even be able to argue it's at least the funniest performance of his career, even if I'll always go with 2003's The Human Stain. Gregory Hoblit is a director known for churning out competent, if routine, thrillers (Primal Fear, Fallen, Frequency) and this isn't a departure for him, even if it does stand as one of his lesser efforts. In his defense though, there isn't much more he could have done with the material. He gets as much mileage as he can out of a laughable script, at least knowing enough to step back and let Hopkins do his thing. That's where this film's bread is buttered. So if you're up for it, go rent Fracture for a good time, but be aware that side effects may include the loss of a few brain cells