History Film / Fracture2007

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Crawford could have walked away scot-free, if he hadn't taken his wife off life support. Her death allowed Beachum to obtain the bullet from her brain, and prove that Crawford swapped his gun with Nunally's--and opened Crawford up to prosecution for murder, removing his protection under double jeopardy law.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: Mrs Crawford is shot in the first ten minutes and spends the rest of the film in a coma, but is central to the plot.

->''I killed my wife... Prove it.''

''Fracture'' is a 2007 thriller, directed by Gregory Hoblit and starring Creator/AnthonyHopkins and Creator/RyanGosling.

* CoolCar: Crawford drives a Porsche Carrera GT. Beachum drives a 1974 BMW 3.0 CSi.

* MaliciousMisnaming: Crawford repeatedly refers to William Beachum as "Billy" to mock him as a little boy trying to play games with an older genius such as him. Beachum tries to convince Crawford that he has no problem with it, but it's clear that he does.

* GambitRoulette: The plot requires that the correct cop be called into the scene of a murder, recognize the victim as the woman he was having an affair with, and then attack her husband. Furthermore, it required that he not kill her husband, but be sufficiently angry to not notice that the husband was switching their guns.

* HollywoodLaw: Ted Crawford is on trial for the attempted murder of his wife, who'd cheated on him. Due to various ploys, he has some of the prosecution's key evidence excluded and gets acquitted. Then, to make things worse, he decides to remove his wife from life support (who's in a coma since he shot her), as he's her next-of-kin. Young prosecutor Willy Beachum gets a court order to stop him, but hospital security prevents him from entering the room, and his wife dies. Beachum then finds some new evidence, and looks up exceptions to double jeopardy with which to file a murder charge against Crawford. The movie closes with Crawford on trial again, this time with the expectation that he'll get found guilty and justice will be served. First of all: security guards likely would get in trouble for stopping a person waving a court order. Aside from that, the supposed exception to double jeopardy doesn't hold up. Attempted murder is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_included_offence lesser included offence]] to murder, meaning it merges with the other. Thus, if you're acquitted of one, it applies to the other as well. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_estoppel Collateral estoppel]] also prevents a party from re-litigating the same facts that were decided on previously. ''The Volokh Conspiracy'' blog discusses all this [[http://www.volokh.com/posts/1177883377.shtml# here]], including the fact that there was a lot more evidence against Crawford than was excluded which he could have been convicted on to begin with.

* ThePerfectCrime: Getting away with murder. Almost.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first scene shows Crawford briefly examining an x-ray of a failed aircraft part, circling a particular point and telling his colleagues that was the point of failure. When asked if he wants to wait to see if he was right, he casually says "nope" and drives off. Both his hubristic confidence and his ability to quickly identify weaknesses are key parts of his character.

* 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.

* HollywoodLaw: Ted Crawford is on trial for the attempted murder of his wife, who'd cheated on him. Due to various ploys, he has some of the prosecution's key evidence excluded and gets acquitted. Then, to make things worse, he decides to remove his wife from life support (who's in a coma since he shot her), as he's her next-of-kin. Young prosecutor Willy Beachum gets a court order to stop him, but hospital security prevents him from entering the room, and his wife dies. Beachum then finds some new evidence, and looks up exceptions to double jeopardy with which to file a murder charge against Crawford. The movie closes with Crawford on trial again, this time with the expectation that he'll get found guilty and justice will be served. First of all: security guards likely would get in trouble for stopping a person waving a court order. Aside from that, the supposed exception to double jeopardy doesn't hold up. Attempted murder is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_included_offence lesser included offence]] to murder, meaning it merges with the other. Thus, if you're acquitted of one, it applies to the other as well. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_estoppel Collateral estoppel]] also prevents a party from re-litigating the same facts that were decided on previously. ''The Volock Conspiracy'' blog discusses all this [[http://www.volokh.com/posts/1177883377.shtml# here]], including the fact that there was a lot more evidence against Crawford than was excluded which he could have been convicted on to begin with.

''Fracture'' is a 2007 thriller starring Creator/AnthonyHopkins and Creator/RyanGosling.

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 by presenting himself as a layman unacquainted with courtroom procedures but deciding to represent himself by exercising his basic rights, presumably out of hubris. When he later pushes for an acquittal based on lack of admissible evidence by the prosecution, he reveals that he has quite a bit of legal expertise, which the annoyed judge quickly notices. You can especially see it when he uses the legal phrase "motion for judgment of acquittal", not having demonstrated any familiarity with them earlier.\\

* SmugSnake: The film shows a good contrast between a Smug Snake and a MagnificentBastard (or, [[spoiler:considering how he [[VillainBall screws everything up]] [[WhatAnIdiot 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.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first scene shows Crawford briefly examining an x-ray of a failed aircraft part, circling a particular point and telling his colleagues that was the point of failure. When asked if he wants to wait to see if he was right, he casually says "nope" and drives off. Both his hubristic confidence and his ability to quickly identify weaknesses are key parts of his character.

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 by presenting himself as a layman unaquainted with courtroom procedures but deciding to represent himself by exercising his basic rights presumably out of hubris. When he later pushes for an acquital based on lack of admissable evidence by the prosecution, he reveals that he has quite a bit of legal expertise, which the annoyed judge quickly notices.\\

* GambitRoulette: The plot requires that the correct cop be called into the scene of a murder, recognize the victim as the woman he was having an affair with, and then attack her husband. Furthermore, it required that he not kill her husband, but be sufficiently angry to not notice that the husband was switching their guns. In spite of his otherwise brilliant planning, the husband failed to even realize that shooting someone, being found innocent of attempted murder, and then having life support withdrawn, constitutes a count of murder separate from the initial crime.

* ReverseWhodunnit: "I killed my wife...Prove it."

* GambitRoulette: The plot requires that the correct cop be called into the scene of a murder, recognize the victim as the woman he was having an affair with, and then attack her husband. Furthermore, it required that he not kill her husband, but be sufficiently angry to not notice that the husband was switching their guns. In spite of his otherwise brilliant planning, the husband failed to even realize that shooting someone, being found innocent of attempted murder, and then having life support withdrawn, constitutes a count of murder separate from the initial crime.

Ted Crawfard (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 his wife was having an affair with. 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 slam and dunk, and he barely investigates the case. Crawford elects to represent himself at his own trial however, and soon presents evidence that reveals that the cop who arrested him was screwing his wife behind back, making Crawford's signed confession inadmissable as fruit of the poisoned tree since it was obtained under duress. On top of that, the murder weapon is inadmissable as well 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 walk free, as he tries to find another way to put Crawford behind bars.

Ted Crawfard 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 his wife was having an affair with. When the case is presented to deputy district attorney William Beachum, 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 slam and dunk, and he barely investigates the case. Crawford elects to represent himself at his own trial however, and soon presents evidence that reveals that the cop who arrested him was screwing his wife behind back, making Crawford's signed confession inadmissable as fruit of the poisoned tree since it was obtained under duress. On top of that, the murder weapon is inadmissable as well 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 walk free, as he tries to find another way to put Crawford behind bars.