"Fracture" (2007) - Movie Review

It is pleasant to see a good thriller with interesting plot and suspense to make the audience feel satisfied. There are lots of pitfalls in the upcoming movies now a day, since there are numerous talents consistently creating plots, suspense, and tricks in it. That brings in the notion of whether those creativeness is exhausted. Added to that, the audiences are educated and start to solve the plot. They do not want to sit and be ignorant about what is happening and blindly believing. They sit along with the primary characters and try to find out the details before the director reveals. They achieve the pleasure of attaining success over the creator, so to say.

All the people watching this movie would try to find out the little “weak spot” of the immaculate planner and clever Ted Crawford who after shooting his wife, confesses and still able to challenge the people’s prosecutor Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling). The attempt most of the films do is they dive in to outcome the audience’s guess work. Hence they lose control of the story and screenplay, and the material gets lost in this useless competition. Gregory Hoblit does not get into that pitfall. He knows that the audience knows that there is a small piece in the puzzle missing, which would be cracked definitely by the prosecutor. So he puts forward a film which deals with slight adjustments in spicing the ambience surrounding this prosecutor. Make him push over the edge and see how things go. And it works.

Willy is in his last days at the DA office and is about to launch the career of his life. He has got an offer from the well known private corporation. This is the situation which messes up his head. Every one does it. When some one is leaving for vacation, they take things easy and rest of the colleagues understands it too, even though it is not right. It is the people’s perspective that the damage is never one unless it happens for real. The film does not project him as a winner. They project him as a winner of opportunities. He knows how to play around to get things done properly and still legally. He underestimates his last case and his submerged conscience gets the treatment to re-evaluate his own advancement in his life.

Ted on the other hand is already a successful career man owning an Aircraft Corporation. He is brilliant and super confident. This makes him stronger and smarter. He has planned this whole play very carefully and with enjoyment. He starts moving his coins properly right from the moment he comes to know about his wife’s affair. He is wicked in every sense and does not hide it to Willy. His overestimation does bring him down.

The film covers all the base in the plot, not for the record but the screenplay is structured demanding those properly. Whenever the audience think of an act by a character is stupid, the film clarifies and confirms it as stupid. This runs smoothly and without notice for all kind of actions and consequences of those. Couple of these instances places the audience in the right frame of mind on what exactly the movie is going about. Nicely done.

While the trailers suggest it as court room drama, very minimal sequences happen inside that place. The movie is more about the question of choices and finding justice irrespective of the situations and personal preferences. It does not fancy itself into digging and research the character of Ted. He is a man who wants revenge over his wife’s affair. His revenge is cold and planned to precision. It is wrong. Willy wants a career of his own to settle his financial constraints and his conscience mixed with his ego wants him to pursue this case. The film outlines that; every margin of conscience runs along as picking the right choices and sticking up to it. Whether Willy makes those choices right? Yes and No. The film justifies that.

It is definitely an entertainer and in that genre, it works. Most of the films work well in those but a real entertainer comes when it is done right. It is executed right so that at the end of the movie, when the audiences leave the theatre, they can leave with satisfaction of getting a right entertainment and not guilty pleasure. The only letdown is an unnecessary intimacy between Willy and Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike) without which the film could have done all the same. Apart from that, “Fracture” plays nice with a screenplay intact and interesting to produce the entertainment in the right way.