Slick Willy meets his match

I'll tell ya, I'm really glad I don't watch Law & Order because apparently a lot of people did not like this movie because of legal technicalities they supposedly "learned" while watching said TV show. I, on the other hand, found Fracture to be, for the most part, a thoroughly engrossing film, with two excellent performances at its center.

Sure, there are several things in the course of the unfolding of the story that didn't add up, and upon reflection afterwards, there were a few more. This isn't a perfect film. But it didn't telegraph (at least not to me) in an obvious or heavy-handed way where it was going with the plot, and it didn't have a clear-cut good/bad character distinction between Hopkins, as the full-of-himself wronged husband, Ted, and Gosling's equally-full-of-himself slick lawyer, Willy. In fact, up until a certain point in the film (where Gosling's character chooses not to do something that would have been supremely unethical just so he could win the case), most viewers would probably be rooting for Hopkins' character. I think it's very tricky to create that sort of response from an audience, and Hopkins manages to pull this off with hardly any fanfare whatsoever, although a couple of times I almost thought he was going to make that sleazy-yet-somehow-seductive liver-sucking sound.

The film also leaves enough for us as the audience to figure out for ourselves, which I always appreciate, although in this case, ironically, the more you think about it, the more seemingly obvious plot holes come to mind. In this way, the movie lives up to its title in a way that I don't really think was planned. Then again, maybe it was, and the film makers get the last laugh.