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.
Sammo
2nd Nov 2017
Fracture (2007)
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
7th Nov 2007
Fracture (2007)
Corrected entry: Crawford shoots his wife and then fires 4 shots through the glass. But throughout the movie there are only references to 4 shots being fired and 4 shells being found.
Correction: That's right, they found 4 shells, and the gardener heard four shots. The gardener most likely miscounted how many shots he heard, as under stress that is easy to do. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting to suggest there were more than four shots fired.
That's wrong. The correction, I mean, but also the mistake. The mistake is not there because Crawford shoots only 3 times through the glass, so the bullet count is correct and the OP is wrong. That's it. The mental gymnastics of the correction are unacceptable, though; you can't randomly assume that every witness and investigator in the movie is wrong and the movie itself wouldn't address it at some point just because in the real world mistakes happen.
31st Aug 2008
Fracture (2007)
Corrected entry: Midway through the movie, Anthony Hopkins calls Ryan Gosling at Hopkins' office. Hopkins could not possibly know the exact moment Gosling would be at Hopkins' office because Hopkins was in jail at the time.
Correction: This is a case of we don't know what was happening behind the scenes. Hopkins could have been trying a few times his office to check and see if Gosling had stopped by. Hopkins would know that Gosling would visit his office at some point to try and ascertain any possible evidence. Lucky perhaps, but it doesn't contradict anything to confirm it being a mistake.
Correction: This is also a case of a movie villain going for a big flex. They keep vague in the movie itself how he would exactly be able to do that, but there are several possible methods (it was his own company with presumably his own handpicked staff, and throughout the movie, he shows to be in constant touch with private detectives also due to his status as being his own defense attorney) where they actually go for the "how did he do that, come on!" feel. It's not a case of fridge logic plot hole where you have NOT to think of how stupid and implausible it is; the fact that it was out of the ordinary is, on the contrary, the actual point of the scene.
31st Aug 2008
Fracture (2007)
Corrected entry: Anthony Hopkins' entire scheme is based on the exact LAPD officer who is having an affair with his wife being the single officer who enters his home to arrest him. Per the LAPD website, on 08/29/08, there were 9753 sworn officers in the LAPD. Wrong officer responds and the entire scheme fails.
Correction: Hopkins asked for the detective. If you listen carefully before the detective entered the house, he was told that Hopkins was specifically asking for him before anyone else.
But Hopkins' ask wouldn't have been met. The PD would have strict policies that wouldn't allow Hopkins to have conditions set on his arrest. Police department dispatchers assign officers on practicality, not personal request, in order to ensure the response is fast and impartial. Also, Hopkins was banking on the detective that was "____ing the victim" being present, but investigation integrity policies wouldn't let that happen. (This undermines Hopkins' genius, as he would have known that.)
I did "listen carefully," but I haven't picked up on any dialogue saying anything of the sort. And it does not agree with how the plot unfolds at all. Unless I am mistaken after triple-checking, the correction to this damning plot contrivance is plain wrong. Hopkins asked for Nunally through the phone earlier in the movie, being told when he would be on duty, but nobody made the connection between the current situation and the earlier call. The mistake is valid, since it hinges on a statistical implausibility that was completely out of the killer's control.
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