Silencing the lamb

Noel Vera

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury:

I submit to you that Gregory Hoblit's latest film isn't a crime
thriller or even legal thriller at all; one just has to see Anthony
Hopkins' Ted Crawford make his furtive way round a swimming pool,
observing his wife Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz) and her police lover
Rob Nunally (Billy Burke) in a watery clinch, to see what the
picture is really up to: a chance for Sir Hopkins to strut once more
in Hannibal Lecter mode.

Consider: Hopkins is much too old for the physical demands of
playing a serial killer (the last time he did, five years ago, Brett
Ratner had to cut around the fact that he was using a stunt double
much of the time). He is also too familiar to audiences now, is
probably aware that they may be tired--is himself probably tired--of
the role. If Sir Hopkins were to don yon hockey mask one more time,
he would be laughed off the screen; he needed a new shtick, a new
way to entertain the audience.

Hence, this cleverly modified part. Instead of playing a serial
killer of superior intelligence, he plays a murder suspect of
superior intelligence (keeping the man incarcerated is key, as both
Jonathan Demme (who directed him in "Silence") and Hoblit must have
realized--behind bars Hopkins is a magnetic presence, able to
represent tremendous forces in check, or great evil barely held at
bay); instead of a dewy young FBI agent for a foil, he has dewy
young prosecutor Willy Beachum (played by aptly named Ryan Gosling);
instead of committing a series of horrifying killings he commits
just one, his wife's; instead of a devilishly planned escape, a
devilishly planned trial defense--with Beachum's career prospects
also put at stake as a kind of collateral.

But if that were the only aim of the picture, ladies and gentlemen,
I would plead mere plagiarism. As is, Hoblit and writers Daniel Pyne
and Glenn Gers fashion an amusingly intricate tale of misdirection,
where Ted Crawford lulls Beachum into thinking he has an open-and-
shut case (Crawford is arrested holding a gun and has confessed
verbally and in writing) before zinging the unsuspecting fool (it's
amazing how aeronautics engineers (Crawford seems to specialize in
finding design flaws, or structural damage) are easily able to
outmaneuver trial lawyers with a 97% conviction rate). Hoblit has
gone this way before, of course; back in 1996 he directed "Primal
Fear" where an overconfident defense lawyer played by Richard Gere
walked into an interrogation cell containing a scared, neurotic
prisoner played by Edward Norton. Parallels too with the O.J.
Simpson case, where the blame is ultimately put on some unnamed,
unknowable and probably nonexistent other man.

Hoblit you must remember is a veteran TV director--"NYPD Blues," "LA
Law," "Hill Street Blues" (almost a who's who of '80s television)--
turned filmmaker. He knows how to stage an efficient, effective
scene, he knows how to keep the narrative moving (in "Psycho" Alfred
Hitchcock depended on a TV crew to help move the heavily expository
scenes along swiftly), and he largely avoids the greatest sin a
competent craftsman (as opposed to a great artist) can possibly
commit--be pretentious. With the help of cinematographer Kramer
Morgenthau he is able to bathe the courtroom in amber lighting, lend
the corporate law offices a seductive modern glow (This is what the
law offices in Taylor Hackford's "The Devil's Advocate" should have
looked like--less comic-book obvious, more diabolically chic), and
even give us sweeping helicopter views of what little downtown Los
Angeles has managed to accumulate that actually seem fresh, and not
stock footage.

In Gosling I submit that Hoblit has found his second Norton. Gosling
is not as startling a discovery--he's been noticed as far back
as "Remember the Titans" (2000)--and his role isn't as showy as
Norton's, but he's asked to slowly wake up from his smug
complacency, reach down deep into himself, and pull out a response
strong enough to be pitted against Hopkins' sly hamminess without
evaporating in embarrassment. Gosling's solution is to let Hopkins
walk all over him, again and again and again; the tension from
waiting for the tide to turn--for Gosling to deliver Biblical
comeuppance on Hopkins--becomes well nigh unbearable.

As for Hopkins--pure hokum. But, ladies and gentlemen, I submit that
the hokum is presented without hypocrisy; this is not an important
film, nor was it meant to be, and the frankness is frankly
refreshing. Hoblit plays up Hopkins' Lecter tics, shining a light
into Hopkins' eyes to give them a reptilian glitter; posing his
figure, erect and immobile, against various dark backgrounds (one
thinks of some tightly bound golem about to burst into malevolent
life); lingering over the creases and crows' feet around the eyes to
give the impression of weathered toughness and ancient cunning--of
someone whose style is to burrow underground, undermining all who
oppose him.

I submit that the ending is overly simple, and is either telegraphed
or confused by the matter of Officer Nunally's offering a bit of
manufactured evidence of his own to help the case (by way of
mitigating circumstances, I do think it a relief that for once a
thriller is resolved not with a shootout or car chase, but with
brain and wit desperately probing for an opponent's
weakness). "Fractured," ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is no
great film, but it's a surprisingly good one, able to entertain and
make full use of its cast (and the associations they bring with
them) without insulting one's intelligence or sense of reality. I
ask you to do the right thing, and find the defendant not guilty of
the crime of boring the audience. Thank you.

(First published in Businessworld, 5/18/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)