untitled
FRACTURE
Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Written by: Daniel Pyne & Glenn Gers
Internet
Movie
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GRADE: C+
2007.
In the decade and a half since his memorable turn in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins has been getting progressively hammier in a Rod-Steiger-in-Oklahoma!
sort of way, an actor whose style just seems out of place with the
movies around him. It's not entirely his fault, moreso that the movies
just don't have much of a place anymore for senescent thespians from
the Olivier school; that is, for old-fashioned Britons. However, in Fracture,
a dumb and forgettable film, he turns in a heck of a performance;
though only in it for the money, he has a discernibly good time playing
a charismatic madman which is, after all, demonstrably the sort of
thing he does best.
It doesn't hurt, either, that playing off of him is Ryan Gosling, who
despite his Canadian birth is America’s finest young actor and
hands-down the most exciting performer in Hollywood today. He plays the
straight man to Hopkins’ quippy loon and struggles to keep a
straight face, a formidable task in itself; Hopkins, having a whale of
a time, is a riot, and the two of them together, particularly in the
early scenes, are an infectious blast.
The surrounding movie, however, doesn't measure up to them, as it's
working off of a clumsily, lazily constructed script and led by a
director who seems the type to judge the quality of a book based on the
number of words and not the quality of the sentences. Fracture
is way too long—many of its scenes could’ve been excised
entirely, such as, say, nearly all of the first two reels that show
Hopkins, some sort of pre-eminent engineer, first at the office and
then up to no good sneaking around; meanwhile, his wife keeps herself
busy by adulterating. When she returns home, he shoots her in the head
and is soon arrested for attempted—as she remains in a
coma—murder.
Gosling plays the cocksure, superstar public prosecutor assigned to
Hopkins' case. He has an outgoing answering machine message that says,
“It’s Willie Beachum—tell me what I need to
know,” which, in its pithy arrogance, ought to tell you what you
need to know about him. The case ought to be a breeze since Hopkins was
arrested with a gun in his hand and subsequently signed a full
confession; that’s good for Gosling, who's got one foot out the
office door, ready to start his new job at an elite private
law-firm—the kind of place comprised of people who “play
squash and have middle names,” as Gosling's snidely informed by
his idealistic boss, the always reliable David Strathairn.
But if the case against Hopkins is so open-and-shut, then why is he
pleading not guilty? Well, it turns out to be a slam-dunk more of the
George Tenet variety: the confiscated gun was never fired, and the
detective who procured Hopkins’ confession was his wife’s
lover. It's all been an elaborate—and implausible—set-up!
Though lamebrained and cockamamie from start to finish, the fine
performances of the two leads, who aren't just phoning it in, hoists Fracture
far above the level of comparable Halle Berry vehicles; it’s a
pleasure to watch, at least until the final act when everyone starts
taking themselves a bit too seriously. Hopkins oozes with the refined
civility and seductive charm of Jay Gatsby—whom he recalls by
relentlessly addressing Gosling as “old sport”—and
his twisted and dangerous villain is exceptionally ghoulish in virtue
of his intelligence, composure and sympathizability. (So you
can’t blame Gosling's character, who recognizes the threat such
an affable madman presents, for going a bit nuts in his obsessive
dedication to nailing him, though you can blame Hoblit for letting it
happen so sloppily.) Gosling, for his part, lends palpability to
Willie’s crisis of conscience, as well as credibility to his
transformation from self-possessed yuppie to altruistic citizen.
After its dragging intro sequence, Fracture moves along
clunkily though tolerably and it’s certainly not for want of wit;
it's only that, at particularly at two hours, it’s cinematic
storytelling at its most mediocre, carless and far-fetched. The
ingenious quality of Hopkins' scheme is more absurd than brilliant, and
a romantic subplot between Gosling and his boss-to-be goes nowhere and
says little. The performances make Fracture almost worth
seeing, but, though I expect Anthony Hopkins to be making such movies,
Gosling, at this point in his career, is really above this sort of
paycheck-scoring fare. Here’s hoping he doesn’t make a
Brandoesque career’s worth of third-rate movies like this one.
--
Henry Stewart
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