Los Angeles assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling, Half-Nelson) is on his way out the door. Not because he’s not good at his job, the prosecutor’s 97-percent conviction record speaking for itself, he’s leaving because he’s just gotten a plum offer to work at one of the state’s biggest and best corporate law firms. “I didn’t work this hard to stay where I belong,” Beachum tells his boss Jack Lobruto (a smoothly elegant David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck), just two more weeks and one more case standing between him and a six-figure salary.

That one more case isn’t near as simple as the cocky assistant D.A. thought it would be. Renowned aeronautical engineer Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs) has admitted to shooting his wife Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz, Schindler’s List) in the head for having an affair leaving her in a coma. Problem is, the only gun found at the scene isn’t the murder weapon, Crawford’s clothes show no traces of blood or gunpowder residue and the man’s fingerprints are nowhere near the actual crime scene. Worst of all, his confession isn’t good, the crafty airplane manufacturer spilling his guts to Detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke, Ladder 49) the very man secretly having that affair with his wife.

Looking like a fool, Beachum can step away from the case and all his plans will still be intact, his sexy future boss Nikki Gardner (Rosamud Pike, Pride and Prejudice) urging him to do just that very thing. But Crawford keeps egging him on and, more importantly, this out-going prosecutor doesn’t like to lose or see people get away with attempted murder. With everything riding on the outcome, Beachum struggles to put his case back together and send his intelligent adversary to prison before the judge presiding over the case has no other choice then to acquit due to a lack of evidence.

What I like most about Gregory Hoblit’s (Frequency) new film Fracture is how it never stoops to cheap sensationalism to generate suspense. What I like even more is just how little time this courtroom thriller spends in an actual courtroom. Daniel Pyne (The Manchurian Candidate) and Glenn Giers’ (The Accident) imaginative screenplay works overtime to place its characters far outside the Law & Order norm, not once insulting the viewer’s intelligence or pandering to the gun-firing theatrics so often resorted to in lesser features of which this particular genre is overflowing with.

Don’t take that to mean all is wonderful. The twist bringing everything to a close isn’t as crafty or as unexpected as the filmmakers obviously think it is; an observant person will have this one clocked within the first 30 minutes. More, Nunally is such a gigantic dimwit it is hard to believe he would have ever been allowed to join the police force let alone become a hostage negotiator. The out-of-nowhere romance between Beachum and Gardner also doesn’t help, the film using this affair as a conduit to explore moral ambiguities that unfortunately never come to any sort of pleasing resolution.

These are serious problems, but thankfully I can overlook them all mainly because Fracture is one of the more ferociously entertaining thrillers I’ve seen in quite some time. Oscar-winner Hopkins and Oscar-nominee Gosling snipe and bark and jaw and play with one another like two boxers sizing up their opponent right before unleashing a lethal right hook. They are fantastic, the latter in particular delivering such a wondrously fresh portrait of cocksure grace under fire it’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off of him.

Hoblit handles things masterfully. The movie never feels long or dull, the director keeping the pace moving forward but never resorting to cheap theatrics in order to do it. The slight of hand he uses to disguise the clues and hints, all of which are readily available for an audience to decipher, unlocking the story’s climactic secrets is absolutely fantastic. Much like his work on Primal Fear, Hoblit knows when to pull, when to punch and when to let an audience’s imagination play their own primordial tricks, the director playing with my emotions like a master conductor confidently leading a symphony orchestra.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)