Fracture, not to be confused with the other film Fractured directed by Brad Anderson, is an interesting film filled with mind games. A man kills his cheating wife, calls her Lieutenant lover who has no idea who the husband of the woman he’s been sleeping with is. Imagine his shock when he sees that the man he came to take a statement from is the killer.
The man then goes to court with so much glee and represents himself against an ambitious lawyer who underestimates him at first until much later. This is the kind of thing I like to watch.I really do not like blood and gore in thrillers. I prefer to have that out of the way and focus on the back and forth in court. Any mind games that do not involve sinister murdering.
I was a bit worried when I saw that Anthony Hopkins was in this film. Worried because we kind of know what he’s capable of in Hannibal Lekter. But I was also intrigued because I knew whatever part he would be playing would be so good. I knew I was in safe actor hands. He of course plays the man who murders and goes to court gleefully, winking at Ryan Gosling, his opponent in court.
There are things I wish I knew about his wife before the shooting like the reason for the affair. In the brief moments before her death, we could see that Anthony did adore her but they seemed to have this tension especially from her end where she accused him of believing himself to be smarter than her and I suppose everyone else. Seeing his maneuvering to extricate himself from being accused of murder, it was clear that he was brilliant and she was not exactly a dumb woman, so I was actually interested in knowing at what point his brilliance began to irritate her enough to feel insulting. If there was ever going to be a prequel made to explain the occurrences, I’d have loved to understand what led to him snapping in this smiling psychopathic way? Had this always happened in his life in other areas? Had his wife cheated perpetually?
Rosamund Pike played Ryan Gosling's girlfriend in a big time lawyer firm. I think she was quite pretty here with those unique eyes of hers, but otherwise kind of useless in her role. This part could have been played by someone else. Apart from the first moments between her and Ryan where they had this flirtatious talk that made me feel the palpable power dynamics in their relationship which I felt for some reason would turn into something sinister, because it is Rosamund after all and she’s not too far off behind Anthony in psychotic roles,nothing really happened. It was way too ordinary and I just felt like I was missing something.
I also think that the way it ended was a bit of a let down. I wanted it to be more interesting than knowing that some gun had been switched. I mean that there is sophistication in simplicity, however I was hoping for something with a ‘wow’ effect. I want to pin this part down to the time this was produced. Perhaps it was jaw breaking for that era or sufficient enough, but this kind of ending would most likely not pass in 2022.
All the same, I want to say I enjoyed the time spent watching these people on screen and I’ll rate it a 9/10.
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