A Ryan Gosling thriller has become an unlikely Netflix hit 17 years after it hit the big screen.
Fracture, which was helmed by Prima Fear director Gregory Hoblit, starred the Barbie actor as hotshot prosecutor Willy Beachum, who has been given what appears to be an open-and-shut case.
Sir Anthony Hopkins’ character Ted Crawford is arrested for attempted murder after confessing to shooting his wife following her affair with police detective Robert Nunally (Billy Burke).
However, the defendant is more cunning than the lawyer anticipated, and any hopes of an easy conviction are quickly extinguished.
According to JustWatch, the movie was Netflix’s more streamed film in Ireland last week, proving its staying power.
The service figures out its charts by looking at users’ activity over the past seven days.
The website notes: ‘This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as “seen.”‘
It topped the list in Ireland above more recent movies like Wicked Little Letters, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and The Iron Claw, and classics like Pulp Fiction.
The gripping legal thriller, which also starred David Straithairn, Rosamund Pike and Fiona Shaw, was a box office hit, grossing a total of $92.1 million worldwide.
It has a ‘fresh’ rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics were full of praise.
At the time, Associated Press hailed the film as ‘suspenseful and darkly stylish’ with ‘an unexpectedly dry sense of humour’, while AV Club said Crawford was Hopkins’ best suited role since Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs’
Gosling’s lead role could actually have gone to Chris Evans, as the Captain America actor previously recalled losing out on the part despite a great audition.
‘You know which one was a close one? Fracture. Remember Fracture with Ryan Gosling? I honestly have never had a better audition in my life,’ he told The Hollywood Reporters’s Awards Chatter podcast in 2020.
‘I hate auditioning. I despise it. I think most actors do, but I got that one and knocked it right out. And it was so great and I had such a great rapport with the director and really felt like it was coming my way.’
Evans was keen to work with Hopkins and thought the project might have been one to help him ‘turn a corner’ at that point in his career.
He added: ‘And to lose that one… obviously, Ryan, if you’re going to lose to someone, lose to Ryan. But it was just one of those things where you think, “Man, this is tough.”‘
Fracture is available to stream now on Netflix.
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