You Baby Gorilla.

Fracture

Starring: Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling
Directed By: Gregory Hoblit
Written By: Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers

Picture this: Anthony Hopkins is reallllllyyyy smart. And he's preeetttyyy eevvvill. And he's matched up against a brilliant but wet behind the ears up-and-comer. There might be some twists, there might be some turns. Sound familiar? It does, at least a tad, right?

Well that's because it probably should, considering The Silence Of The Lambs won the Oscar for Best Picture (insert little "rights" or maybe "copyright" sign that I don't have on my keyboard here) in 1991. And while my mind is sorta blown by the fact that that was over 15 years ago, and I'm once again reminded that despite my best efforts and worst behavior I'm still quite a few years past twenty one, 1991 wasn't THAT long ago.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting out of this movie since I was fully aware of the premise before I saw it, but I guess I just didn't think it was going to so transparently be Law and Order: Lecter in the Courtroom. Though to the filmmakers credit, they did cast a prettier foil for Hopkins by putting Ryan Gosling in the place of manface anglemonster Jodie Foster. It's really been downhill since Taxi Driver for her, yeesh.

I think I'm just too much of a sucker for trailers. Ninety percent of the time my reaction to whatever trailer I'm watching is "oh christ, I can't WAIT to see that!" Usually movies like Fracture get pushed to the back burner thanks to movies that I actually can't wait to see, which often involve a member of the Stifler family. But I pretty clearly remember being really into the Fracture trailer. Somehow it just didn't wear off in time.

The other reason I've become increasingly sour on this movie is that I WAS watching Joysticks with my roommates first, but they complained about how much it sucked and we had to turn it off to watch this instead. I guess FOUR boobs in the first MINUTE AND A HALF was just too much awesome for them. I ended up watching Joysticks next, and of course the following 82 minutes WERE awesome. But that's for the next entry.

The biggest issue I had with the movie turned into an increasingly heated debate with my one roommate about the logic of the movie versus real life criminal law. It's way too elaborate and long winded to get into here, but if you care, it also turned into an even longer and more drawn out argument, complete with actual legal advice HERE and HERE.

Time has not been kind to this movie when it comes to my review, so I'm bumping it down to 2 short and curlies out of 5. Only watch it if you're in the mood for a legal thriller. Or shitty fake southern accents. Or David Strathairn REALLY mailing it in.

Info:
-Official Site
-Buy it cheap on Amazon
-IMDB

Trailer: