Fracture (Widescreen Edition)

This psychological thriller held our attention -here's why
First of all, the movie starts off with a murder and you know who the murderer is. So it isn't a suspense story as much as a psychological thriller, the type that pits two very strong personalities against one another (played by Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling).
Each is a control freak and each is ambitious. The whole thrill of this movie is watching the characters, seeing how they develop and change and wondering how this will all play out.
Looking at the reviews that others have written for this movie, it is clear that people tended to love or hate this movie -and I think I understand why. For one thing, you KNOW what happened -and why -almost from the start. But I happen to like character-driven movies and this one is definitely in that vein. Yes, Hopkins does seem to recreate his Hannibel Lechter personalty (or hints of it) but that worked out fine in this instance.

Fracture - a review
Fracture is a great psychological drama that stars Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. Fracture is a film with qualities reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock era that really left me guessing until the very end. Gosling's performance as a young smitten lawyer named Willie Beachum is something to applaud. I was not impressed when he was cast in a crime thriller called "Murder by Numbers" with Sandra Bullock a few years ago, but those thoughts are now erased from my memory. Beachum takes on the case of a successful engineer named Ted Crawford, who is accused of attempted murder. As the clues become less and less presentable, Beachum suddenly realizes that Crawford is playing some sort of game, and it is a game of chance and elaborate mind games that Beachum just might win.

Fracture did not douse me with puzzles, in fact it really held back in that area and yet the continual drama that played out between the two main characters was more than enough to keep me not just guessing,...

Classy, Entertaining Battle-Of-Wits Story
If you like courtroom dramas, appreciate excellent acting and an expertly-filmed movie this is for you. Only once, I think, have I ever proclaimed something "best movie of the year" and all that, because it's all too subjective and also a cliché but that's how I feel about this movie unless something better comes along the last few months of 2007.

This is just a fabulous movie with Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling playing characters who engage in a battle of wits. Hopkins plays a husband who discovers his wife having an affair, shoots her, confesses the same night and then has things cleverly arranged where it's almost impossible to convict him. Gosling plays a young, hotshot prosecuting attorney on his way to bigger and better things with a change of scenery to corporate law but gets stuck with this open-and-shut case right before he switches firms. The trouble is, it's a lot more than he figured and he isn't used to losing. Hopkins knows this, of course, and plays...

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