Fracture (Blu-ray Disc, 2009)

The first scenes in director Gregory Hoblit's suspense are of Ted Crawford's (Sir Anthony Hopkins) masterfully precise, polished & intricately engineered room of inventions. The setting is all important as it points to the murder's genius.

We witness Crawford kill his attractive, somewhat younger wife, Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz). So there's no suspense built up before witnessing her murder in the same room that displays his other works. There's no guessing why Crawford chose to kill his beloved: Jennifer was having an affair with police Lt. Robert Nunally (Billy Burke).

Enter genius of another type: Asst. DA Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), whose record of convictions has a leading law firm eager to have him join their team. Beachum's about to close his last case when the DA persuades him to close in on Crawford for murder one. The hot shot prosecutor can't resist testing his mettle with the likes of Crawford's.

A much more mild mannered 'Hannibal Lecter' cannot help but come to mind, as Crawford begins to play highly calculated games in Beachum's ballpark: the law. Suspense becomes dependent upon one question alone: which one's genius will out wit the other's?

Like Hannibal Lecter's infamous for doing, Crawford relentlessly exploits every loose end in the law & Beachum's gapping holes in the case against him. The more Crawford taunts Beachum, as if he's an upstart, the more competitive Beachum becomes. Instead of the case being a matter of solving it, for Beachum, it's a matter of beating Crawford at his best game yet.

It's literally risky business to do so because Beachum's ambition to land the law firm's offer & attend to his sophisticated girlfriend, Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike) are very high stakes with which to gamble. And, from the start, Beachum's got 2 major obstacles to overcome: he can't locate the murder weapon & the Lieutenant failed to tell him that his lover was Crawford's wife.
Ouch!

The reason I've compared "Fracture's" Crawford to "Silence of the Lambs'
Lecture is because the 'cat and mouse' chase between a younger eager law enforcement agent and an older master of his trade is a major similarity between the two films. Other than that, Hopkins plays Crawford in just an understated British-mannered style of acting that he's nothing like the evil incarnate cannibal Lecter. Crawford likes an ultimate challenge. Beachum's determined to remain unbeaten.

As critquer I feel it's a mistake to place this film in the 'thriller' genre. What Hoblit and the cast have done is created a film that artfully builds up the tensions of good suspense step by step, gradually. It's definitely not a thriller because there is no point in the film where an audience would be holding on to their seats for someone to jump out of a closet or for things that go bump in the night.

Hopkins delivers in the genre he's an Oscar winner. Without his lead performance "Fracture" wouldn't have the same tension build up of suspense. We know what the elder master of suspense is capable of performing. That, in and of itself, drew me into the plot, immediately.