Fracture

Director: Gregory Hoblit

Movies like "Fracture" are something of a rarity these days. It's a taut and well-constructed thriller in which two intelligent characters go head to head in a battle of legal wits. In the right corner we have Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a wealthy structural engineer with a beautiful wife who is having a passionate affair with a detective. One night she comes home and Crawford shoots her. That should be the end of the story since he's clearly guilty of her murder but it turns out to be just the beginning. In the left corner we have Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a brilliant and ambitious public prosecutor who has just been offered a senior position with a major legal firm. He gets handed the Crawford case as his final job and naturally assumes that it's an open and shut affair.

Crawford chooses to represent himself in court and immediately turns everything around. He reveals that the detective who was at the murder scene was having an affair with his wife and it turns out that the gun which was retrieved as the main piece of evidence against him has never been fired. Willy is none too pleased about all this as it means that he can't move into his swanky new office just yet. His professional and personal pride is at stake, which, as Crawford points out in a "Silence of the Lambs"- style prison interview, is his weak point. What really sets "Fracture" apart are the excellent performances from Hopkins and Gosling. Hopkins is as mesmerising as ever. The merest twitch of his eyes can convey more than most mainstream Hollywood actors manage to convey over the course of an entire movie. And Ryan Gosling is proving to be an exceptional talent following his outstanding performance in "Half Nelson."

"Fracture" is a ponderous, languid and rather melancholy movie in which the structure of things is intriguingly called into question, whether it be the law or human relationships. Its one weak point is that it never really explains why Crawford would go to such lengths to incriminate himself and then absolve himself of guilt. But Hopkins is so good in his part that you just shrug your shoulders and assume that's the kind of guy he is. Anyway, after a summer of mindless blockbusters, it seems churlish to complain about a film in which people aren't spinning webs, flying on surfboards or fighting giant robots.

Now showing in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.