Fracture

“What's the sound of a feeling?”asks Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), his eyes flinching ever so slightly to betray a hint of madness. He's just caught his wife coming home late, after having seen her with another man. As the wronged man, Ted should be thrashing about and shouting, but he has too much dignity for such passionate silliness. “I love you,” he later wearily says to his wife, Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz), after which he takes out a gun and plants a bullet in her head.

Fracture is a movie in quest of that sound, and director Gary Hoblit (Primal Fear, Frequency), finds it in the most unlikely places. An aeronautical investigator by profession, Ted is a perfectionist, seeking out the slightest fractures in crashed airplanes to uncover the cause of the accident. And so the plan in which Ted sets out to trap the seducer is a flawless one in Ted's view, which begins by manipulating detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke), the man who’s been screwing his wife, into becoming his arresting officer. And with that, the game of cat-and-mouse starts, as Ted tries to get away with attempted murder.

The cat here is assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) who believes he's got an open and shut case at hand. Beachum is a man between jobs—about to move away from the public life and settle into private law—but is unfortunate enough to be twisted up in Ted's scheme.

The movie is primarily a showdown between the two leads, with side roles like Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike), Willy's future employer who sleeps around with him, becoming distractions that merely lengthen and flesh the movie out to its two-hour length. Between the two actors, however, it's clear that Fracture is Hopkins's movie, thanks to Hoblit, who captures every twitch, frown and malicious eyebrow that he raises, seeking as it were, the sound of that feeling with every flinch.

That sound is no more obvious than towards the end, when Ted sees sees his meticulously created rolling ball scultpture damaged when he returns home. The camera focuses on Ted's face, concentrating on the glass ball rolling down against brass rails, watching him flinch just for a moment at the thud that happens when the ball unexpectedly drops.

It's moments like those that elevates Fracture above Primal Fear, Hoblit's movie ten years ago that pitted Richard Gere against Edward Norton in a claustrophobic room. But there’s no such upstart competition here; the swagger of the young Gosling is dwarfed by the for the calm ageing Hopkins and his subtly malicious eyes. Fracture is a movie that revels in subtleties, quiet moments, and sudden revelations, which at the end, leaves you on the edge to the sound of elbows creaking and necks straining as you wonder how it's all coming to an end.

Cast Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, Embeth Davidtz, Billy Burke, Rosamund Pike Director Gary Hoblit Runtime 113 minutes Opens 30 August

TEXT JOHN LIM