message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

            
Fracture  Rated R
Directed by Gregory Hoblit.  Starring Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling

Photos © New Line Cinema
Fracture is the movie equivalent of microwaved leftovers.  Earlier servings seemed tastier and went down better, but there’s nothing particularly awful about the meal.  Take one part “Silence of the Lambs” (with Sir Anthony Hopkins playing mind games once again), mix with one part John Grisham (an up-and-coming Southern lawyer having a battle of conscience), toss in a little bit of adultery and murder and – voila! – you get a nice enough but forgettable screen entertainment. Ten minutes after the movie starts, we witness Ted Crawford (Hopkins), a brilliant aeronautical engineer, murder his cheating wife and confess to the crime.  It seems like an open-and-shut case to Willy Beachum, the young assistant district attorney (Gosling) assigned to prosecute.  This is to be his last case with the DA’s office before he leaves to join a prestigious law firm. But the engineer has a few tricks up his sleeve, designed to get him off the hook with technicalities.  This kind of thing could only happen in the movies, and the filmmakers waste little time trying to create a plausible storyline.  Alas, the film can be criticized for not having more fun with this material.  And, unfortunately, all of the female characters are portrayed as sex objects (including Beachum’s new supervisor at the law firm); this retro male dominance seems woefully out of place in a contemporary film.  This could have been a decent morality play, but it’s content to exist as an average puzzler with a “surprise ending” that fails to make much of an impact.  Director Hoblit spent time with “Hill Street Blues” and “LA Law” before beginning his film career, and this movie seems like an upscale TV movie.  Whenever a film makes me wish I was home watching television, something is amiss.  Wait for the DVD.  No, better yet, wait for this to show up on television..

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos.  (A mildly diverting suspense drama, with some good actors having fun with the genre.)  Two pitchforks. (Occasional strong language, scenes of adultery and strong violence.)

 

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