Movie Review: Fracture

So I haven't posted in quite a while but thats largely because no movies that have come out have warranted me going to see them. However, I did randomly decide to go see Fracture some random weekday as the previews had looked pretty good. Overall, it was exactly as I expected, which was pretty good.

I had never seen Ryan Gosling before but had heard excellent things from Half Nelson to The Notebook and he was really quite good. He was a little wooden at times (but so was his character) but pulled off the frustration with Anthony Hopkins really well. Hopkins basically seems to thrive in this role of psychologically manipulative criminal. After killing his wife (happens in first two seconds, not giving anything away) he engages in a pretty decent plot to prevent his prosecution. These two guys made the whole movie and were really quite good performances. It also had a good campy (but sincere) public service, get the bad guy feeling, which in a West Wing/Spy Game way really drew you to the profession.

What held the movie back from being a really good crime was the twist that ultimately allowed Gosling to prevail. It was sort of clever, but they dropped far too many hints about it to be a real surprise. Plus, it was the kind of thing that given all that Hopkins had foreseen and preempted it seemed somewhat impossible to imagine he hadn't thought of it. Overall, I'd definitely recommend seeing it, especially over Disturbia, Next, Vacancy, and all the over crap.