With a title like "Fracture" and a star like Anthony Hopkins, I expected a taut, high-end classic thriller.
Instead, I rather got the feeling that the movie was put together by talented but lazy people who treated their audience with the same disdain that the Ryan Gosling character (Beechum) had for his final prosecuting case.
It's simply not good enough to have gaping plot-holes at this level of feature movie-making. We can all forgive weak writing, or less than brilliant directing and acting from time to time, but it's not nice feeling taken advantage of just because the movie makers knew they had Hopkins on board playing his stock-in-trade psychopathic killer, and could then get away with any old TV-derived schlock.
SPOILERS:
If nothing else, the movie should have set up how the Hopkins character (Crawford) would know for sure that the officer who was screwing his wife would be the same one to investigate the shooting at his home. Also, how could she not die when shot in the head at point-blank range with a Glock .45 by a man as cool and competent as the Crawford? Fracture's various plot-problems have been well documented by other reviewers on this site, so I won't draw attention to them, other than to inquire as to the relevance of the girl - at all - and the rolling-ball contraption? I find it ironic that a complex metaphor like "fracture" is used alongside a gaping plot. (I still don't really understand its relevance in the movie, but maybe I'm a bit dumb.)
I'd also like to make a confession:
I was rather sorry that the Hopkins character got nailed at the end. I had gotten to like him and, to compound my disappointment, I didn't really believe the (predictable) ending. Crawford was far too clever to be caught out like that. It would have solved a whole bunch of plot problems had he got off. It would also have introduced a theme into a theme-less movie: That you can't always make up for lost time if you didn't do your job with heart and soul when you had the chance. This, ironically, is the theme that the movie-makers of Fracture will take with them as their picture disappears into the morass of unremarkable celluloid.
Instead, I rather got the feeling that the movie was put together by talented but lazy people who treated their audience with the same disdain that the Ryan Gosling character (Beechum) had for his final prosecuting case.
It's simply not good enough to have gaping plot-holes at this level of feature movie-making. We can all forgive weak writing, or less than brilliant directing and acting from time to time, but it's not nice feeling taken advantage of just because the movie makers knew they had Hopkins on board playing his stock-in-trade psychopathic killer, and could then get away with any old TV-derived schlock.
SPOILERS:
If nothing else, the movie should have set up how the Hopkins character (Crawford) would know for sure that the officer who was screwing his wife would be the same one to investigate the shooting at his home. Also, how could she not die when shot in the head at point-blank range with a Glock .45 by a man as cool and competent as the Crawford? Fracture's various plot-problems have been well documented by other reviewers on this site, so I won't draw attention to them, other than to inquire as to the relevance of the girl - at all - and the rolling-ball contraption? I find it ironic that a complex metaphor like "fracture" is used alongside a gaping plot. (I still don't really understand its relevance in the movie, but maybe I'm a bit dumb.)
I'd also like to make a confession:
I was rather sorry that the Hopkins character got nailed at the end. I had gotten to like him and, to compound my disappointment, I didn't really believe the (predictable) ending. Crawford was far too clever to be caught out like that. It would have solved a whole bunch of plot problems had he got off. It would also have introduced a theme into a theme-less movie: That you can't always make up for lost time if you didn't do your job with heart and soul when you had the chance. This, ironically, is the theme that the movie-makers of Fracture will take with them as their picture disappears into the morass of unremarkable celluloid.