Film Review – Fracture

January 11th, 2010 | POSTED BY Chad Eng

Fracture – Anthony Hopkins plays an uber-intelligent psychopathic killer. Totally unlike what he usually plays and is famous for… no wait… that IS what he’s famous for. Ted (played by Hopkins) finds out his wife is cheating on him with a police officer. Ted waits until she gets home to confront her and then shoots her in the face. She doesn’t actually die, but is more or less brain dead.

There’s a hot shot lawyer who is moving to a big law firm from the public defender’s office in LA. He gets assigned the attempted homicide case as his final case as he’s transitioning to the new office. He runs into some timing issues and some chain-of-command issues with his new employer. Ted has masterminded all kinds of things to get him off from this crime. He makes a mockery of the court since there is no actual evidence he shot his wife in the face, despite a written confession. Ted is his own attorney and plays everything very cool and makes a lot of trouble for the hot shot lawyer.

Ted gets off for his crime and begins taunting the hot shot lawyer and eventually pulls the plug on his dying wife just to wrap everything up with a nice little bow. To rub it in the lawyer’s face, Ted decides to give the lawyer a parting gift since he’s leaving the country as soon as possible. So the lawyer heads over to Ted’s house for a final confrontation.

This film is actually a pretty good whodunit, or I guess more of a howdidhegetawaywithit. You know Ted did it and you know how, but you watch the entire movie and try to figure out how he got away with it. It’s fairly suspenseful, but not nail-biting or anything. All the shooting and fighting is right up front. And then it gets all smart and lawyer-y. I’m guessing if you like those TV crime shows, this will be right up your alley. Whenever I think a movie is difficult to figure out until they expose all the pieces, my friend Coach comments that he had everything figured out in the first 20 minutes. He’s a dick. I’m curious if other people figure out the film quicker than I did. This film is worth a look. It’s not as gruesome as Silence of the Lambs, so think of this as the Garrison Keillor version of that film.

(3 out of 5 fus)

Anthony Hopkins, Fracture, Gregory Hoblit, Murder, Ryan Gosling, suspense