Metacritic reviews

Fracture is working on us, playing us, but that's its pleasure. It makes overwrought manipulation seem more than a basic instinct.

Gosling is the kind of actor who makes other actors look lazy. He is Brando at the time of "Streetcar," or Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces," and altogether one of the more remarkable happenings at the movies today.

Gruesomely engaging.

Just because a movie is freakin' preposterous doesn't mean it can't be diabolical fun. Case in point: Fracture.

Effective dialogue doesn't necessarily mean witty dialogue, but wit certainly helps, and you tend not to get much of it in a low-key legal thriller. Fracture is an exception.

What makes Fracture hum is the way Hopkins bares his teeth, twitches his nostrils, and trains his shiny pinprick Lecter eyes on his co-star.

The movie entertains, but it's a shallow entertainment where you have no rooting interest in the outcome.

An absorbing legal thriller that can't help but taste like exquisitely reheated leftovers.

In the dark of the theatre Fracture keeps it together – mainly through the sheer will of Hopkins and Gosling.

It renders passion dispassionate and turns murder into a kind of fashion statement, something we observe without really caring about.