A solid cinematic chess match with legal thriller trappings, Fracture centers around Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a well-to-do man who kills his cheating wife, and readily admits it to the responding police officer. Crawford has his eyes on a bigger game, though, and mitigating circumstances, including the lack of a matching weapon, give him several important trump cards when he decides to represent himself in court against hotshot Los Angeles assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling, below left).



A poor kid made good, Southern-born Willy already has one foot out the door for a cushy private sector gig at Wooten Sims & Crowley, a prestigious defense firm where Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike, above right) will be his immediate supervisor. Because of this and other factors, Willy underestimates Crawford, and gets sucked into a tangled circus trial that lets a man he knows is guilty walk free.

A very well made genre picture full of smartly modulated friction, Fracture is predicated on a few significant leaps in believability, certainly (a murder case going to trial in under two weeks, for one), but director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) knows his way around the criminal justice system. Hopkins, of course, is reliably steady, even if he's just essentially tossing off a minor chord variation on Hannibal Lecter here. Gosling, meanwhile, gives a great, engrossing performance as the slick, narcissistic Willy — a blithe egotist who finds his golden touch evaporating before his eyes. When he comes under fire and suddenly finds an embarrassing blight on his near-perfect record, it ignites in him a deep competitive instinct that Fracture, quite agreeably, never pawns off on a reawakened idealism. Not so deep down, Willy’s a bit of a self-centered jerk, you see, but never less than fascinatingly watchable.

Presented separately in either full-screen or anamorphic widescreen versions, Fracture comes housed in a regular Amray case with a promotional insert, and features a nice transfer and an animated menu screen that plays up the slickness of the film's flawless design work. Apart from the theatrical trailer, the only bonus feature is a 34-minute collection of seven deleted or extended scenes. Actually, that tally is a bit misleading, since two of those bits are alternate endings (in convening for re-shoots, the filmmakers picked the right one) that run around 12 minutes apiece. An alternate opening provides an amusing introduction to Willy's character, with him getting stuck in his apartment due to his landlady's shabby parking job. But the joint highlight and disappointment has to come in the form of two included love scenes (slightly different edits), which showcase Pike... but only in a tasteful negligee, sorry. Interview inclusions from Gosling or at the very least Hoblit would have really given this disc extra value. As is, it's a great movie with a bit less swagger than it should have on DVD. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)