Fracture

Continuity mistake: In the end of the film where Willy and Ted stand together in Ted's house, Ted says to Willy "See, you can't touch me, ever". The shot goes to Willy and you can see his finger off the trigger, yet in the close-up on the trigger you can see that Willy's finger is inside the trigger-guard and he pulls it out. (01:46:15)

Continuity mistake: In the glimpse of the last trial, the bailiff says, "All rise," as Judge Pincus walks in, and people behind the prosecution bench take the instruction all too zealously as they do it twice - in different ways. Check out the guy with a jacket on his arm next to the woman in red - in separate shots. (01:48:20)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Crawford sees Willy out after telling him to get the eff out, Hopkins turns towards the door, fully lit. He then peeks out of the door, now showing a more dramatic shadow on it. (01:47:50)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: In Willy's flashback when he speaks to Crawford for the denouement, his SPH-a900 flip phone and Flores' swap position compared to how the actual scene went. Just look at the position of the three buttons; the buttons of Beachum's faced him originally, they face Flores when he grabs it by mistake in the flashback. (01:37:55 - 01:41:55)

Sammo

Fracture mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Willy rings Crawford's doorbell, notice a white control panel below the CCTV screen. Hopkins then answers the door in a different shot, with the panel missing. The panel was always there during his earlier scene with Nunally, and it is still there for the rest of the scene, missing again only in a later zoom-in on the monitor as Crawford checks on the prosecutor. Probably those were later reshoots. (01:39:25)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Crawford taunts Beachum, waking him up by his comatose wife's hospital bed. Beachum slides his left hand under the jacket he had draped over himself, but in the next shot, his hand is raised. (01:27:05)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Beachum and Flores are looking at the security camera footage from Nov 10. Willy enhances the picture (the mouse pointer gets gigantic along with the picture, funnily enough), but when it cuts to a different angle, the image is zoomed out again, only to be zoomed in again a few seconds later when Willy angrily throws his bag across the room. Nobody touched the PowerBook during any of that. (01:13:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Lobruto asks Beachum, "You want it back?" after telling him the high stakes of staying committed to the case. Gosling nods, hand over his mouth in close-up. In the wider angle of the room, his hand is on his knee. (00:57:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Willy opens the box with the eggshells Crawford sent him to taunt him, the cardboard flaps have been properly spread out for the close-up instead of being partially up like they were before. In the same close-up, he also pulls out a broken bit that loses the straw that was covering it, but in the next shot featuring Ryan Gosling's face, a straw wrapped on top of the broken eggshell falls off it anyway. (00:56:10)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Willy says "I don't know" to the judge's question about Nunally being present at the interrogation, Ryan Gosling changes position all of a sudden, from tucking his chin between thumb and fingers to having his knuckles against the side of his mouth. (00:49:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Before the first day of the proper trial, with Ciro's deposition, there's a montage showing Willy Beachum getting ready. However, in that montage, he suits up wearing the red tie that he was wearing in its introductory scene at the beginning of the movie and that he ruined with the coffee spill. The scene was supposed to be edited earlier in the movie, probably. At the trial, Beachum sports a black tie. (00:43:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: From the moment Beachum puts down on the table between them the disclosure folder that Crawford mailed him back, it faces different directions without anyone touching it. (00:38:30)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Willy complains about the unmarked folder that Danny, the clerk, brought him. He looks at the folder, holding it with one hand, instantly turning it into both hands at the cut. (00:37:20)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Willy is on the phone talking furniture and asks the difference between Italian and English, Flores is reaching inside the inner pocket of his jacket as he walks towards the camera. At the cut, his hand is on the notepad, and only then does he proceed again to reach inside the jacket, this time finally pulling out a pen. (00:33:05)

Sammo

Fracture mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Willy asks the decorator on the phone what's the difference between Italian and English, his Samsung Blade switches hands, switching back when he holds it against his chest. (00:33:05)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: At the party, Nikki Gardner is walking and talking with Willy, asking him about what happened with a fellow associate of the law firm. Willy listens with exaggerated expressions, palm on his mouth; his fingers rest at opposite sides of his nose between shots. Similar blunder a moment later, when she starts saying that Burt never interviews juniors; his hand should be on his left cheek, but in the reverse shot it's not there; he touches it only a second later. (00:29:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When the judge asks Willy Beachum if he has an objection to Crawford's request to represent himself, Willy's arms go from straight to bent between shots. (00:25:00)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: In the first courtroom scene, Crawford fires his attorney. Throughout the scene (starting with the wide shot, but also in the transition between closer angles), Sir Anthony Hopkins' hands change position instantaneously between shots. (00:24:25)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Ryan Gosling massages his foot while turning down a bargain plea, his wristwatch shows it's 4:40. A couple of scenes later in the day, he is called into court for a 3 PM arraignment; he complains about having just 15 minutes to get there, and his wristwatch now shows it's a little after half past noon when he cleans the spilled coffee, and then a couple of minutes before noon when he rubs his eyes. (00:19:30 - 00:23:10)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: During Lt. Nunally's rather clumsy attempt to talk Ted into giving him the gun, when the camera is behind Ted, his head is tilted in the opposite direction of Sir Hopkins' in close-ups. (00:14:20)

Sammo

Plot hole: *SPOILER* Toward the end of the movie, Ryan Gosling goes to Hopkins' house where Hopkins is tricked into not only confessing again, but giving Gosling the murder weapon, after they are back in court and Gosling is the acting prosecutor. This would be a conflict of interest due to the fact that Gosling is a witness.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: First, the gun that Beachum took from Crowford's house was not the murder weapon. It was Crowford's unfired gun. He only took it out of the fear of his life. Second, Beachum entered Crowford's house with police supervision. If he plays it by the book, Crowford's confession is valid. In that case, supervising officers will stand witness, along with a recording confirming their testimony. Third, Beachum doesn't need the confession anymore. He was amply clear on that matter.

FleetCommand

You are on point for the corrections, but they involve just mostly context/details, don't they? The text of the entry should be polished a little, but the core issue is valid, I think; Beachum would never be the acting prosecutor in a case when he is the key witness as well. If it's a case for the "murder," he has to be on the stand for practically everything; even if we exclude him from the confession to the shooting, as you suggest (and even if it should never be litigated to begin with), he still is integral to the pulling the plug phase (he was literally there as it happened and did everything to prevent it). We can just assume that he will be forced to hand the prosecuting role over to someone else later, and he was just there for 5 minutes to gloat before the movie credits run, but it's kind of funny.

Sammo

Beachum doesn't have to testify, neither for the confession part nor for the "pulling of the plug." I've already covered the former. For the latter, the fact that the woman is now dead is enough. If necessary, the attending doctors could testify that the woman "would have outlived all of them."

FleetCommand

Beachum received the confession under "police supervision," as you called it, which still involved him being the only person in the house with the defendant. You mentioned a recording in the earlier comment; are we just to assume he took one, or is there a visual hint I missed? He was also the person who fought for the court order to the point of being physically tackled in front of the victim's deathbed—so doctors and security staff defiant of such an order would be on trial too, I suppose? Since, again, this 'murder' was not even committed by Crawford. So how would Beachum not be a crucial witness, often the only witness to cover that part of the story?

Sammo

OK. You want to assume Crawford's confession was for the viewer's benefit entirely, and there was no wiretapping? Fine. The police have the gun now, hence proof of the first actus reus. Hospital staff tackled Beachum, but Crawford can't pin the murder on them when he has two counts of actus reus and twice demonstrated mens rea. Courts always hear such nonsense as "I didn't kill him; I shot him. The bullet and the fall killed him" (Collateral, 2006). Shooting someone is actus reus.

FleetCommand

I am sure you are right on the Latin, especially since it's hard to imagine the trial going the way it went the first time around to begin with, and I am not getting into the rabbit hole of what exactly could legally be relitigated. But still and again, what does this have to do with the original point being made, that some other guy would be the one leading the trial, since Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness, even a hostile one? I mean, I honestly didn't think it would be much of a point of contention; it's just something there for the audience. I followed the lead about the 'witness' part the OP ended on, but seriously, a conflict of interest would be invoked just because of all the personal first-hand, hands-on involvement in the facts.

Sammo

I explicitly told you what happens if the court struck the confession from the record. (The gun happens.) And yet, here you are, saying "Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness"! This correction is turning into a confrontation. Also, don't conflate "involvement" with "conflict of interest." The latter means someone has different de facto and de jure motives. Beachum always had one motive: to convict Crawford.

FleetCommand

Far from me to be confrontational, and sorry if I came across that way. I guess I simply don't get it; it happens. Specifically, if I stated again the point about the witness, it wasn't because I was blindly disregarding what you said (check the words immediately after the ones you quoted), but it's pointless to delve further into something that goes beyond the original mistake. You just directly addressed the meaning of conflict of interest, which was what the OP talked about. I simply felt the initial correction posted was not doing that; now it does, and I am not disputing your knowledge on the topic, especially not having any of my own. Cheers.

Sammo

More mistakes in Fracture
More quotes from Fracture

Trivia: The prop department had some fun during the making of the movie; you can see a lot of names of miscellaneous crew slipped in a few spots. There are boxes with case files scattered around the district attorney's offices; the ones behind Willy in his own office (People vs. Bonaventura - Tony Bonaventura being the property master, People vs. Morgenthau - Kramer Morgenthau being the director of photography) get quite a bit of screen time, but there are several others all over the office space, all carrying the name of a crew member. For instance, in a brief sequence when a dejected Willy walks up to Mona's desk to ask for her help before the third act, you can see unique ones. There's also a listing board with judges during the arraignment, and one with doctors when Willy is stopped by the hospital security; both of them are filled with names of production crew members. (01:16:50 - 01:33:20)

Sammo

More trivia for Fracture

Question: How does the motel scene pan out? Crawford enters without taking any precautions (except the hat that manages to fool the one security camera) and only by plot armor cloak is by neither victim, who are frolicking in the pool a few feet from him and could and should see the old stocky dude hobbling around their bungalow fully in the open. Then he enters through a keycard that is never explained. Poolside we then see at one point the lieutenant looking towards the bungalow, frowning; what's with the frown? There is nothing suspicious about what is shown there, and Hopkins is not doing - at that part of the scene, the way it is edited - anything that would draw attention. Also, the phone call at the beginning doesn't make sense for anything but providing background for the audience, considering he already knew where Nunally was.

Sammo

More questions & answers from Fracture

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.