Fracture (2007)

Eleven years ago, Gregory Hoblit made a spry, nimble thriller called Primal Fear, which launched Edward Norton’s career as a stuttering altar-boy attempting to conceal the psycho within from Richard Gere’s flash defence attorney. Hoblit’s new, handsomely-shot courtroom mystery shares parallels to Fear with its twisty, cat-and-mouse face-off between veteran star and young upstart. This time around the roles are switched, with Ryan Gosling’s cocky assistant DA on the right side of the law, pitting wits against Anthony Hopkins’ creepy “fracture mechanics” engineer (he solves plane crashes), who’s shot his wife point-blank in the head (Embeth Davidtz, with Hollywood’s easiest acting gig: lying in hospital in a coma).

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