History Film / Fracture2007

** Beachum is riding high on life, convinced he can do no wrong as he prepares to leave the District Attorney's office for a job with a prestigious law firm. He takes on Crawford's case rather carelessly, convinced that it's an open-and-shut case with ironclad evidence--so he's taken completely by surprise when all the evidence gets yanked out from under him. The case destroys his new career with the law firm before it can start, leaving Beachum completely humbled.

* SmugSnake: The film shows a good contrast between a Smug Snake and a MagnificentBastard (or, [[spoiler:considering how he screws everything up at the end,]] a much more high-functioning Smug Snake). The former is a smarmy prosecutor who believes he has gotten a completely open-and-shut case, and consequently has not bothered to do his job properly. The latter is a murderer who believes he has made himself untouchable despite the case against him seeming to be bulletproof, and is not worried about [[SmugSmiler showing how confident he is]]. The reason you are almost rooting for the murderer is because his arrogance comes from having planned everything very carefully, rather than smugly assuming he's going to win. The fact that he's played by Creator/AnthonyHopkins certainly helps.

However, Crawford elects to represent himself at his own trial, and soon presents evidence which reveals that the cop who arrested and interrogated Crawford was screwing his wife behind his back, making Crawford's signed confession inadmissable in court as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree fruit of the poisonous tree]] since it was obtained under duress. On top of that, the murder weapon turns out to be useless due to a clever switcheroo that Crawford performed during the arrest. Beachum sees his life crash around him due to his own hubris and a murderer walks free, as he desperately tries to find another way to put Crawford behind bars.

** [[spoiler: A mix-up of cell phones with his colleague leads Beachum to discover how Crawford was able to kill Jennifer without leaving any evidence he had done it. Nunally and Crawford both used the same type of gun, a .45 caliber Glock 21. Before the murder, Crawford had switched his and Nunally's guns in the hotel room where Jennifer and Nunally were secretly meeting. Crawford shot his wife with Nunally's gun and then reloaded it. The detective had arrived on the scene carrying Crawford's gun, and both had put down their weapons as a preliminary move in negotiations. When Nunally had recognized the victim and rushed over to her, Crawford then switched the guns again, retrieving his own, unused, weapon. When Crawford had reappeared brandishing his gun, Nunally had tackled and assaulted him, before Crawford's arrest. Nunally then unwittingly holstered the murder weapon, allowing the unused gun to be taken as evidence. Nunally had the one piece of evidence that could have convicted Crawford attached to his hip the entire time]].

* BigDamnHeroes: {{Subverted|Trope}}. As Crawford is going to remove his Jennifer's life support, Beachum receives a court order barring Crawford to do so. He drives to the hospital at full speed, but he arrives just too late to save her.

* YourCheatingHeart: Jennifer's affair with Nunally is the reason her husband murders her. Nunally also mentions he is married with children though his family is never seen.

Ted Crawford (Hopkins) is a brilliant and wealthy aeronautical engineer who discovers that his wife is having an affair. He orchestrates her murder and arranges to be arrested by the same cop whom his wife was having an affair with. The wife survives but remains in a coma, while Crawford is charged with attempted murder. When the case is presented to deputy district attorney William Beachum (Gosling), who is about to leave his job as a public prosecutor for a high-profile post at a respected legal firm, the case looks like a clear slam-and-dunk with a murder weapon and a signed confession, and the confident Beachum barely investigates the case.

* BigDamnHeroes: {{Subverted|Trope}}. As Crawford is going to remove his wife's life support, Beachum receives a court order barring Crawford to do so. He drives to the hospital at full speed, but he arrives just too late to save her.

* EurekaMoment: Downplayed, but D.A. Lobruto's sardonic "Technically, you only let him get away with ''attempted'' murder," is what clues Beachum in to a technicality he can nail Crawford with.

* AFoolForAClient: Ted Crawford decides to represent himself in an attempted murder trial, and he does it ''[[GambitRoulette very]]'' [[GambitRoulette effectively]]. He manages to get himself acquitted despite a signed confession, a murder weapon, and motive.\\
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The way he was able to do this was that the investigating detective was sleeping with the victim (the killer's wife) making the confession suspect when the detective's testimony of it was undermined, and the murder weapon had never been fired (he had switched it with the detective's weapon as they were identical models). As for motive, without evidence it's useless. This was helped by the fact that the prosecutor had his foot out the door as he was about to get a job at a prestigious law firm and wasn't taking the case very seriously due to the mountain of evidence. Crawford also purposely used an ObfuscatingStupidity angle to appear like an easy win to the haughty and uninterested public prosecutor.\\
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[[spoiler:When the prosecutor then finds a way to try Crawford for murder, Crawford hires a defense team of 4+ lawyers. He no longer has the tricks available that got him acquitted the first time.]] Both times rely on HollywoodLaw.

* YourCheatingHeart: Crawford's wife has an affair with Nunally. Crawford finds it out and decides to murder his wife.

* HollywoodLaw: As noted in [[http://www.volokh.com/posts/1177883377.shtml# this blog post]] from ''The Volokh Conspiracy'', the movie kind of runs on this.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Early on, William tells the story of how he was prosecuting a man with connections to a high-powered law firm. When the defendant tried to bribe him with introductions to some prominent people, he accepted, causing the guy to underprepare for the case, which allowed him to win an easy conviction. This foreshadows William falling prey to the same kind of overconfidence.