Fracture.

film is not even sentient. Over the title sequence of Fracture, and in the glittering sort of Rube Goldberg contraption, all shiny metallic tracks and carved wooden wheels, where small glass balls skitter and roll in an elaborately choreographed dance. It's a beautiful piece of elegant machinery and, one hopes, symbolic of the many complex and artfully managed plot twists to come.

Instead, what we're given is Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling Fracture has no excuse to be so lazy, given the actors at its disposal and a setup that should have made this an easy slam-dunk. Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, Confronting her at home, Crawford shoots her in the head and calmly waits for the cops to arrive. When they do, it's with none other than Nunally at the lead, who's shocked and enraged at finding Jennifer in a pool of blood and Crawford standing there as though nothing had happened.

After a quickly-interrupted beating from Nunally, Crawford later confesses and even waives his right to a lawyer. When it's all dropped in the lap of assistant airtight, which is good since Beachum can't wait to slip the bonds of lowly Things get more complicated, as they do, but hardly more interesting, which is truly a surprise. It's no shock that Crawford has several aces up his sleeve, believes himself to have committed the perfect crime.

And when some of his courtroom they do have an impact, as the film shifts into Beachum's panicked race to win a case he barely thought he needed to be conscious for, and at the But for some reason, it's at that point that Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers' script begins to simply peter out, eventually resulting in one of film history's least satisfying "surprise" endings. Crawford recedes from the picture -- which is probably for the best, as Hopkins is playing it all as a winking lark; fun in compressed into a single episode of Law and Order. It doesn't help that Gosling performance in ) seems barely sentient here, a flicker of wit only Blame is also due to director Gregory Hoblit, a TV veteran (Hill Street Blues) with sterling casts at their best and a general sense of winking fun.