Movie Review Fracture
Fracture is a 2007 film revolving around a murder mystery. ‘Willy Beachum (played by Ryan Gosling) is an assistant District Attorney who gets sucked into a game of cat-and-mouse with a sociopath, Ted Crawford (played by Anthony Hopkins), set free on legal technicalities after being arrested for attempted murder.’ (Thompson 2007 p.1). Crawford’s’ plan for the perfect murder was motivated by his wife’s secret love affair, and resulted in a cold blooded exercise that was cleverly executed. There are no moral challenges for Crawford, whose prime motivation is to succeed in engineering the perfect crime. ‘“It’s about a crisis in a man’s life as he flips back through time” says the Director’, Gregory Hoblit (Thompson 2007 p.1). Crawford designed and built rolling ball machines as a hobby, being an aeronautical engineer by profession, and the constant referral to this concept creates a universal theme, bringing the all components of the film together.
Violence and Crime have a symbiotic relationship within movies in Hollywood, and Hoblit has ensured that these elements perfectly complement one another, allowing it not to detract from the core themes and storyline of the movie. The themes Fracture revolves around are that to do with ego, pride, arrogance, and redemption, however the movie’s primary underlying theme is about discovering a person’s flaw and exploiting it until they crack. The use of the rolling ball machine allowed Hoblit to establish the vulnerability of the themes and characters within the movie. Hoblit saw ‘these “executive toys”...as reflections of Ted Crawford's persona and his psyche in the movie’, highlighting the antagonist’s attention to detail and reflecting back to the underlying theme of a person’s flaw.
Hoblit employed a number of film techniques which enabled him to ensure that the audience received his characters the way he intended to. The use of close ups, also known as personal shots, concentrating on the characters face, gave us a
Violence and Crime have a symbiotic relationship within movies in Hollywood, and Hoblit has ensured that these elements perfectly complement one another, allowing it not to detract from the core themes and storyline of the movie. The themes Fracture revolves around are that to do with ego, pride, arrogance, and redemption, however the movie’s primary underlying theme is about discovering a person’s flaw and exploiting it until they crack. The use of the rolling ball machine allowed Hoblit to establish the vulnerability of the themes and characters within the movie. Hoblit saw ‘these “executive toys”...as reflections of Ted Crawford's persona and his psyche in the movie’, highlighting the antagonist’s attention to detail and reflecting back to the underlying theme of a person’s flaw.
Hoblit employed a number of film techniques which enabled him to ensure that the audience received his characters the way he intended to. The use of close ups, also known as personal shots, concentrating on the characters face, gave us a
References: Fracture 2007, motion picture, Castle Rock Entertainment, Distributed by New Line Cinema, United States, and starring Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins. Thompson B 2007, ‘Hopkins is no one-trick sociopath; Another bad guy role’ National Post. Viewed 08/03/2012 Proquest 5000 database Longhurst B, Smith G, Bagnall G, Crawford G, Ogborn M, Baldwin E & McCracken, 2008, Introducing Cultural Studies, 2nd edn, Pearson Education, Harlow, England. Urban, A. L, ‘Fracture Review’ Empire Online, viewed 8 March 2012 <http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/ReviewComplete.asp?FID=134947>