Saturday, April 28, 2007

FRACTURE




Crime thriller, courtroom drama

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Anthony Hopkins: Ted Crawford, wealthy owner of a giant aeronautics company
Embeth Davidtz: his wife Jennifer
Billy Burke: L.A.P.D. hostage negotiator Lt. Rob Nunally
Ryan Gosling: Assistant District Attorney Willy Beachum
David Strathairn: his boss, the D.A. of Los Angeles County, Joe Lobruto
Rosamund Pike: Nikki Gardner, senior corporate Lawyer

REVIEW
Right from the opening golden close up of someone playing with a Rube Goldberg-like device, the cinematography sets the tone and feel of the film. The cinematographer, the person who is in charge of making lighting and camera choices, generally is given little credit for his contribution. Personally I think it should be among the top three or four, not relegated to the bottom of the pack.

Anyway in keeping with the classy look of the movie, the acting is first-rate (Hopkins in particular) and the intelligent story line will keep your interest. The dialog comes across as real and has a lot of clever bits, some of which are rather amusing. All told, a very entertaining film.

CLASSIFICATION
for language and some violent content.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
Willy is told “a meeting has been arranged for 3:00pm, 15 minutes from now.” At that moment his cell phone rings. The close-up of his watch shows the current time to be 12:02 not 2:45 pm.

When the D.A. comes to visit Beachum at his house, he leaves his car on the street facing up hill. While talking, his car must have done a 180° by itself because when he walks towards his car to drive off it is now conveniently pointing downhill.

P.S.
Possibly the title comes from the fact Ted Crawford is a specialist in fracture mechanics, the engineering science that studies structural flaws in airplane designs? Perhaps not.

Reuben Garret L. Goldberg (1883-1970), better known as Rube Goldberg, earned lasting fame for his complicated and convoluted devices that perform simple tasks using extremely complex roundabout means. The Official Website of Rube Goldberg employs just such a contrivance for its intro.

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