Hopkins, Gosling give their all to ‘Fracture’ and its iffy plot

FRACTURE
2 stars out of 5
CAST: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn
DIRECTOR: Gregory Hoblit
RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 52 minutes
INDUSTRY RATING: R for language and violent content

Gregory Hoblit’s “Fracture” is a nauseating thriller with a “world-gone-crazy” plot in which our hero is unable to convince anyone important of the villain’s treachery until he outsmarts the evildoer at his own sick game. It’s the plot that makes the true getaway at the end, leaving head-scratching holes in its wake.
“Fracture” could be considered the clumsily crafted retread of Hoblit’s own “Primal Fear” but with the roles reversed. We root this time for Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a slick, ambitious deputy district attorney who looks and sounds as if he’s just descended from a John Grisham novel.
Willy is just days removed from joining a high-powered corporate law firm when he agrees to prosecute one final case for the Los Angeles bureau. It’s an attempted-murder case with a seemingly open-and-shut conclusion: a weapon has been recovered at the scene and the prime suspect has offered two confessions.
Anthony Hopkins, no stranger to inhabiting murderous personas, is the defendant, Ted Crawford, an aeronautics expert who shoots his wife (Embeth Davidtz) mere hours after discovering himself to be a cuckold.
As is often the case in the movies, things are not exactly as they initially appear. Ballistics reports indicate the weapon recovered by police was not fired, casting a pall of doubt over the prosecution’s theory.
“Be careful with this guy. There’s something not right about him,” Detective Nunally (Billy Burke) tells the cocksure attorney. Sure enough, it’s the once-meek defendant who unexpectedly drops the trial’s biggest bomb: Nunally, the agent who took his confessions, was also the one diddling his wife.
Beachum, we have a problem.
This cat-and-mouse execution of the film is tantalizing, because it plays to the strengths of Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Gosling. Septuagenarian actor Hopkins raised the neck hairs of many with his chilling portrayal of Hannibal Lector, obscuring his nefarious intent with a deceptively placid persona and a belittling smile.
Consider Ted Crawford to be Hannibal’s less psychotic brother. To both, Mr. Hopkins brings a revelment in surgically deconstructing adversaries and preying upon their unexpressed fears.
Despite his stature in the pictures, Mr. Hopkins does not trample his co-star. Mr. Gosling is a charmer who helps audiences look past his characters’ youthful arrogances, as he did in “Half Nelson.” Ironically, it was those same arrogances that got Mr. Gosling his comeuppance in “Murder by Numbers,” a film in which he executed, not prosecuted, the perfect murder.
If Mr. Hopkins is indicative of our cinema’s rich history, Mr. Gosling undoubtedly represents its promising future. When these two colossi lock horns during their few scenes together, the results are often powerful.
Mr. Hopkins launches the first salvo during a tense jailhouse interview with his younger rival. He offers an unnerving account of his predilection for fracture mechanics, the exploration and understanding of flaws inherent in human design.
“You look closely enough,” Crawford sneers at Beachum, “you’ll find everything has a big spot when it can break sooner or later.”
That would be a good observation about this story line as well. We tend to overlook the leaps of logic necessary as the narrative builds toward a climax. But the ending requires us to reconsider the entire plot, including what specific events would have needed to occur in order for Crawford to have his perfect defense.
I recall what Roger Ebert wrote about “Arlington Road,” a conspiratorial thriller that also hinged heavily on several random events occurring for the proper payoff.
“(It) is a thriller that contains ideas,” the critic noted. “Any movie with ideas is likely to attract audiences who have ideas of their own. But to think for a second about the logic of this plot is fatal.”