Fracture

Fractureⁱ is a fine piece of contemporaneousⁱⁱ noir. The private eye is now a district attorneyⁱⁱⁱ, betrayed by all men, who only live to lie to him, deeply loved by all women, who only live to serve him. If the roots of this genre in the Tenderloin immigrant populations^iv aren't fucking obvious yet ...

The story flows convincingly, up until the last, happyending-required, contortion.^v Ryan Gosling in particular shines against Hopkins' trademark velvet of a performance, in his Sunday best "clean cut young midwestern cowboy" regalia. It's a pity they don't take more overtly sexual advantage of Zoe Kazan's prime subbie face^vi -- she was made to go in chains, I swear. Nevertheless, I suppose it'd have distracted from the narrative.

There's no better ways to spend your time in the air, that much is for sure.

1. 2007, by Gregory Hoblit, with Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling. [↩]
2. Classic noir is a scandalous story of sordid crime focusing on one murder with heavy sexual overtones, told from the point of view of a sexually unatached and romantically unavailable male "of great knowledge", including first person narration ; the contemporaneous variant disposes with that one last element. [↩]
3. Though the traditional occupation of the male hero is given a nod in the script. [↩]
4. Those large families crammed in small spaces by absentee [for work, for drink, whatever] yet harsh fathers along with stay-at-home, loving mothers & older sisters ie girly-slaves.

   Yes, that's the psychological reason for the "emotional unavailability" of the "male hero" : what female kindness connotes in his mind is "sister", and he ain't about to fuck his sisters. [↩]

5. It is true that the double jeopardy clause does not automatically protect one tried for attempted murder, even if convicted and even if the term was served, from being tried again for the murder of the same victim, that happens to have died later.

   Such was the case, for instance, of Carlos Carromero, who shot John Pugh in the back, leaving him paralized, and carring the bullet. Notwithstanding that Carromero's 1984 conviction resulted in a 6 to 18 year term in 1986 (of which he served 11 years, and was parolled in 1995), he was nevertheless tried for murder once Pugh died from an infection in 2013, because the medical examiner opined that the infection that led to Pugh’s septic condition was a direct result of the gunshot wound, and the judge deemed this sufficient evidence that defendant set in motion the events that ultimately caused Pugh’s death.

   This notwithstanding, the wife's death as depicted in the film results from her detachment from life support, not from her having been shot into a coma ealier just as not from her daddy having loved her mommy very much even earlier than that. Yes to a superficial, layman's reading "to set in motion the events that ultimately caused" would appear to cover this situation, but for one thing the correct statement is "to set in motion the chain of events that ultimately caused", and for the other thing agency is involved, making the events not-a-chain and the whole nonsense not applicable.

   Similarily, if you shoot your ex-wife in the shoulder, are tried for attempted murder, she remarries and her new husband kills her in a traffic accident, it's not possible for you to now be tried for murder "because you set in motion". The events are separated by agency, therefore they do not form a chain, therefore you, the shooter, aren't responsible because unrelated and he, the killer, isn't responsible because accidental, or whatever. As you might perhaps intuit, it makes no difference in law if "you" and "he" are the same person, ie if the corpse had prior remarried you rather than some other guy. Notwithstanding that she died, and you had attempted to murder her at some prior point, the events still don't form a chain ; nor does the lawful "killing" of a vegetable constitute somehow, magically, a chain with the unlawful shooting of a wife -- notwithstanding the ever-so-deeply-felt desires involved, that every sperm is sacred, and every vegetable a woman, and bla bla bla whine whine whine.

   All this leaving aside how the detachment order would have never fucking issued in the first place, specifically because even a paralegal separated by merely six months from his previous employment as a barrista would have readily pointed out the fraught nature of the proposed course. Who the fuck did this guy hire as a lawyer, Wesley Snipes ?! [↩]

6. Since we're here, might as well :

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

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