'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

[ihavebiglips]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

SPOILERS AGAIN....

Really, the script might have set it up differently, but I don't know how anyone could watch the first 20 minutes of Fracture and not know exactly how Hopkins' character had set it up. Although I did think that he was going to set up the cop to take the rap for the murder, and I don't know why that never became a part of the plot.

Same here... twenty four hours later I still have plot hole hangover.

[TheKeenGuy]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

SPOILERS AGAIN....

Really, the script might have set it up differently, but I don't know how anyone could watch the first 20 minutes of Fracture and not know exactly how Hopkins' character had set it up. Although I did think that he was going to set up the cop to take the rap for the murder, and I don't know why that never became a part of the plot.

[beejay]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

fracture PDF


more on Fracture:

I love Gosling's upside ... here's what he said about the script.


"I just knew it was something I should do. I liked the suspense, I liked that I couldn’t figure it out when I first read it, and I liked that Anthony Hopkins was playing Crawford. "

and Hopkins said:

"When I read a script, I can tell that it is good even by the way the dialogue is spaced out on the pages, if there’s not too much stage direction in it and they’re not over-explaining it. I liked the grammar of Crawford’s speeches, which didn’t leave room for improvisation. I put a couple of words in here and there, like “old sport.” But it’s like the plays of Harold Pinter: the dialogue is very precise and you don’t need to improve upon it. And that’s why I enjoyed this.

More Hopkins: "Glenn Gers wrote the Fracture script backwards to achieve this sort of effect, and I did not know that at the time. But that’s how they used to write the TV series Columbo. I did a TV movie called Guilty Conscience with Blythe Danner and Swoozie Kurtz and it was written by Columbo creators [Richard] Levinson and [William] Link. And I asked one of the writers some years later, “How do you write these?” And he said, “Well, we write backwards. We start at the end and work back to the beginning.” And I thought that was interesting because Fracture has a similar formula. I’m a fan of this sort of “twist” movie, like Jagged Edge, Presumed Innocent or Sleepers."

[beejay]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

I totally agree with all these points.

What I thought was coming in Fracture was:

Anthony Hopkins taking apart the gun and building
one of those motion sculptures using pieces of the gun.

that would've been clever.

from the Fracture script:

His enlarged eyes follow the metal ball -
- as it rolls and flips and spirals through a Rube-Goldberg style
maze, setting off bells, clicking past turnstiles -
- then missing a leap and clattering across the work-table.
Eyes on the device, Crawford’s hand traps the ball.

why wasn't that device made from pieces of the gun?????

On a tangent, in Bourne Ultimatum, Bourne getting the safe combination
from across the street, was a total rip from Sneakers.

David Strathairn maybe suggested it.

[TheKeenGuy]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

MORE FRACTURE SPOILERS...

I saw this a couple weekends ago, and of course, my major problem is that I knew exactly what the Hopkins character did because the set-up was so obvious (to the point that I suspect this film was messed around with post-test screening).

But yeah, the switched guns also makes no sense because the cops fingerprints would be on the gun that was still in the house, and that given that he never touched that gun, they would've figured out what happened.

The main problem is that the cop/lover character was nothing more than a plot device, when for this film to actually work, he would have had to have been the third lead. Instead, they have him say ridiculous things like "I just thought he was crazy!" indicating that he had no idea when the Hopkins character told him to test the wife's vagina for a pulse that Hopkins knew about the affair. How stupid would this cop have to be.

Also, after a hostage negotiator assaults the suspect, he would not have been in the interrogation room. That plot point was also mind-numbingly stupid.

But apparently, through all of this, the lawyer never saw any reason to interview the hostage negotiator, who assaulted the suspect and whose fingerprints were on the only gun found in the house, before going to trial. A simple chit chat in a parking garage will do.

I still found it watchable to see Gosling and Hopkins spar off, but the script is just a mess. I can't imagine a single lawyer or cop watching this film without popping the DVD out and snapping it in half.

[ihavebiglips]

Re: 'Fracture' and 'Breach' - movies for children

Just watched Fracture and I feel (to use a word recently utilized on DD) STUPIDER.

This thing had more holes in it than the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde.

SOME SPOILERS

For one, I'm sick of Anthony Hopkins playing the brilliant, devious, smarter-than-everyone-in-the-room psycho. It would have been much more interesting if he actually gave a damn about his wife and her affair, and emoted for once. I guess the role didn't call for it, but I wish he'd consider that when accepting these roles. Though Mr Martell has a point in another thread... I'm sure it was a nice paycheck.

Gosling was okay, but has been better in almost everything I've seen him in. The part didn't give him much.

The love interest seemed like they cut two or three scenes that set it up. Okay, both of these people are beautiful... I guess that explains their love and the invite to Turkey Day.

And the real plot holes. Hopkins switched guns with the cop to get the murder weapon out of the house. How clueless are these investigators to not consider that as an option when they found out the hostage negotiator had to set down his weapon, that was the same MAKE as the the murder weapon? Not to mention... they would have known the murder weapon (that was supposedly registered legally to Hopkins) was a DIFFERENT SERIAL NUMBER. Jesus Christ, Hollywood. How does something go all the way through production without somebody, anybody, a ****in' Key Grip... ANYBODY... pointing this type of plot hole out?

Not to mention, Hopkins, as brilliant as he's supposed to be, not connecting the dots on a new charge being brought when he pulled the plug on his veggie wife. Saw that coming 17 miles away.

Man. that hurt.

The directing, vibe, tone, etc wasn't bad. A couple of nice dialogue turns, but that was about it as far as redeeming qualities. Ian summed it up pretty well... a 25 minute TV episode.

[Joaneasley]

Re: 'Breach' - spoilers

I watched Breach with totally different expectations. I'm not a thriller buff. I don't actually like the vicarious experience of constant fear and tension. I get more than enough agita in real life.

I went to see Breach for insight into the character of a real-life spy with a superiority/inferiority complex a la Nixon, who was also freaky and super-religious. What makes someone like that tick?

I became interested after reading about the real case and watching a TV interview with the fledgling agent who risked his marriage, boned up on his childhood Catholicism and befriended the guy to bring him down. For what I came to see, I was not disappointed. The portrayals seemed convincing to me.

[IanFraser]

Finally got around to seeing a couple of US films that'd been floating around.
And good grief - both pretty much sucked.

'Breach' - was a plodding and totally predictable spy thriller. The script was written by a machine on automatic, with comprehension set to 'make sure a bright 13 year old can follow this'.
Whoever the script writer was - they clearly know very little about either how to convey the multi-layered mindset of the intelligence community in an interesting way, or how to make stories that appeal to adults. And I doubt they've read Le Carre.
The political layers that could have fleshed the script out, are completely missing - the 'writer' clearly made some assumptions about the mindset of the end-viewer, that they would be in total agreement with who the bad guys and good guys are. No complexity at all. Except for a fairly ludicrous wallowing in Catholicism as a 'wiggle out of this plot problem' story device at various points. Immature storytelling at its worst, in my view.

'Fracture' - was a TV episode of something, slightly stretched to fit feature length, also operating on the same principle.
A fairly so-so story that could be told in a tight 25 minutes, stretched to feature length and padded with non-essential scenes comprising of nothing except repetition of already made points.
I kept waiting for the reveal of the 'one so-called mystery trick' the script writer managed to create in his story - and when it finally came, it didn't justify waiting through a feature length movie to discover. Insipid writing and basically a banal stretch of a television detective story plot device.
Hopkins looks almost embaressed at being part of such a flimsy waste of screen time, you can see he winced at it, then took the money, learned his lines over a weekend, and hoped it would go away quickly.

I love how bad these films are on every level except the technical, as they
stand as wonderful examples of how likely it is that ultimately, many of the good scripts and writers on this forum, will probably succeed.