Product Description

Academy Award® winner Anthony Hopkins and Academy Award® nominee Ryan Gosling are brilliant in this "exceptionally suspenseful nail-biter" (Rex Reed) that's so smart it "doesn't let go, even after the final twist" (Gene Shalit, "Today"). Ted Crawford (Hopkins) brutally murders his wife and calmly waits for the police to arrest him. With the weapon and a signed confession in hand, Deputy D.A., Willy Beachum (Gosling), believes a conviction is a slam dunk; that is until the case completely unravels. Now, with little evidence, Beachum goes head to head with the cunning Mr. Crawford in a desperate search for the truth and the answer to one burning question: How is this guy getting away with murder?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7335 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-08-14
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 113 minutes

Features

• Academy Award? winner Anthony Hopkins and Academy Award? nominee Ryan Gosling are brilliant in this "exceptionally suspenseful nail-biter" (Rex Reed) that's so smart it "doesn't let go, even after the final twist" (Gene Shalit, "Today"). Ted Crawford (Hopkins) brutally murders his wife and calmly waits for the police to arrest him. With the weapon and a signed confession in hand, Deputy D.A., Will

Amazon.com
Anthony Hopkins plays a brilliant, pathologically serene killer outwitting the good guys at every turn and taking a shine to a twentysomething law enforcer who can’t conceal a rural accent and rugged origins. Could it be...? No, not The Silence of the Lambs, but an original mystery, Fracture, which plays a little like Lambs as an episode of Columbo, minus Columbo. Which means the film tells us from the get-go that Hopkins’ character, a wealthy engineer, shoots his philandering wife (Embeth Davidtz) and leaves her in a vegetative state. From there, it should be a simple matter for young, assistant District Attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) to nail Crawford, who provides a full confession and even eschews counsel. That’s good for Beachum, a slick winner with a vague background of deprivation, rapidly on his way out of public service after attracting the attention of a deep-pocket, private firm. What he doesn’t know, however, is that Crawford has masterminded more than vengeance against his wife, and that the state’s case against him is full of pre-arranged holes and a huge time-bomb that will send Beachum scrambling to keep the pieces together.

The story, conceived and co-scripted by Daniel Pyne (Doc Hollywood), goes down easily with a minimum of blood and violence, and should easily appeal to mystery buffs as well as old fans of Hopkins and new admirers of Oscar nominee Gosling (Half Nelson). The latter holds his own in multiple, two-character scenes with the masterful portrayer of Hannibal Lecter, pacing Beachum’s reactions to Crawford’s polite provocations so everything spills onto his youthful face: torn loyalties, confusion, gullibility. Director Gregory Hoblit (Hart’s War), still best-known for decades of distinguished television work (NYPD Blue), brings the necessary intimacy to make the stars’ chemistry work effectively. His noirish atmosphere is a little over the top, sometimes pushing the audience to a level of expectation that the film isn’t really ready to deliver, but this, overall, is an enjoyable work. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

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, but simply interested in the film's story as a whole.

Generally well done, though nothing extraordinary
This courtroom drama could have been called Hannibal Lite. Though nothing extraordinary, it's well done and enticing. Hopkins plays a brilliant engineer who, after brutally killing his adulterous wife, calmly waits for the police to arrest him. The cocky, young Deputy District Attorney (Ryan Gosling, in a fine performance as a quintessential yuppie) believes this would be an easy case to prosecute, but things don't turn out as expected, and a chilling battle of minds soon ensues. The denouement turns out to be quite disappointing (the filmmakers seem to believe that the audience would not stand a movie where the guilty get away with murder) but for most of its running time, this is a fine, well done thriller.