Constant Viewer: Fracture

Constant Viewer was sooooo excited! Having taken a peek at Metacritic's summary scores for Fracture (I rarely read actual reviews before seeing a movie), it seemed at long last there was something to look forward to on the big screen. I like twisty suspense thrillers, the twistier the better; and while I do expect the critical pieces to fit together at the end, I don’t usually try to figure them out in a race against the screenwriter.

Directed by Gregory Hoblit (Frequency, Primal Fear) and starring Anthony Hopkins as an engineer who shoots his cheating wife and Ryan Gosling as a hot-shot prosecutor who underestimates his opponent in a game of legal cat and mouse, Fracture has all the elements of a very good if not great movie of its sort. Maybe not Chinatown or The Usual Suspects, mind you, but well worth the ride. Indeed, the movie is well directed and beautifully acted with good dialog, an intricate plot and a logical resolution.

And yet, although the resolution works at a logical level, it fails to satisfy emotionally. I had figured out, well, guessed how the missing murder weapon, critical to the plot, went missing in the first place though I hadn’t matched that up with other important clues earlier in the film. I figured out the final twist as well, but more because I have some special knowledge the average viewer wouldn’t be expected to have. (Short of giving a spoiler by discussing the point in detail, I must say that while I’m not entirely sure the film applied that esoteric twist correctly, I will say I think it applied it plausibly.)

But while I might have felt mildly smug about seeing how it would all end, I can’t help but feel that the average viewer will end up feeling cheated on that very point rather the way readers of Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time will feel cheated when the great detective explains to Watson about some esoteric South African poison or other indispensable piece of arcane knowledge unavailable to even the most astute and careful of readers from the earlier text. The problem, in a nutshell, with Fracture is that after so beautiful a setup, the punch line simply doesn’t pack enough punch.

There are other small annoyances, too. Hopkins’s character, Ted Crawford, builds intricate marble track toys as a hobby; you know, where the marble rolls along a track of parallel wires twisting this way and that. Surely, the viewer thinks, these must play more than an obvious symbolic role given their repeated appearance in a number of scenes and the old theatrical rule that a gun appearing in the first act had better be used by the end of the third act. Does the phrase “red herring” ring a bell? The other annoyance, though probably required by the film’s financial backers, is the completely gratuitous subplot of Gosling’s character, Willy Beachum’s nearly new career path complete with obligatory romantic interest (read: mercifully brief rutting scene), an interest that develops faster than a trial lawyer can jump up in court and object on grounds of irrelevance.

Still, Hopkins gives a fine performance in his now signature Lecter mode, toned down considerably here but still deliciously evil, and Gosling gives his formidable co-star a run for his money in the acting department. Their scenes together are simply splendid. The supporting cast is all credible at the very least and, in fact, genuinely supports the effort, especially Billy Burke as homicide detective Rob Nunally and David Strathairn as district attorney Joe Lobruto.

Fracture isn’t a bad movie at all; in fact, it’s quite good despite its several flaws. Constant Viewer can’t bring himself to rave about it or even recommend it enthusiastically, but you could do far worse with two hours of your time and ten bucks of your money right now than settle back and enjoy it for what's there. The movie as a whole may not pass extremely close scrutiny on reflection afterwards, but there are more than enough enjoyable things about Fracture to make it worth the casual viewer's while.