Fracture

Day 177 - 6/26/09 - Movie #176

BEFORE: Another legal thriller, with Ryan Gosling (who played one of the teens in "Murder By Numbers") as a prosecutor - not exactly a "cop" film, but I think it features Anthony Hopkins trying to out-think the legal system.

THE PLOT: An attorney intent on climbing the career ladder toward success, finds an unlikely opponent in a manipulative criminal he's trying to prosecute.

AFTER: What was that about committing the perfect murder? Hopkins' character shoots his unfaithful wife, and somehow no one can find the gun. He then takes advantage of every legal loophole he can find, and gets inside the prosecutor's head, much like Hannibal Lecter did to Clarice in "The Silence of the Lambs". Then he defends himself in court, and like a pool-hall hustler, he pretends not to know the game well at first, but fires off some brilliant shots when the game is on the line. Once the "double jeopardy" statute applies, it means that the dollar values of the questions are greater, and there are two Daily Doubles on the board - no wait, that can't be right...

There is an answer to how he hid the gun, and it's so brilliantly simple that I couldn't have predicted it. I found it hard to believe that someone could be so calm and calculating when faced with a spouse's affair. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then this guy is Mr. Freeze. My other gripe is that Hopkins' character points out to the prosecutor that every plan, every strategy has a flaw in it - so why didn't he realize that his own plan had one?

I would have liked to see more of those intricate machines with little rolling balls in the killer's house, that apparently were only there to show how much of a "genius" he was...but what the heck did they DO? My working theory was that he somehow had a gun made of little golden parts, which he disassembled and hid among the parts of these machines (he didn't - but wouldn't that have been cool?).

RATING: 7 out of 10 motions to dismiss