The Big Gulp

Probably like other lawyers, I cannot watch any of the T.V. lawyer programs. "L.A. Law" irked me when I was a public defender because I couldn’t afford their suits or even their haircuts, much less the snazzy offices they worked & played around in.

Being in criminal law, the crime / law shows were worse torture. Even supposedly gritty ones like "N.Y.P.D. Blue" and "Homicide" rankled.

My loved ones banned me from movies on the subject after "The Verdict," when I gagged on my Big Gulp in so many scenes that I needed a Heimlich to survive.

So why did I rent "Fracture"? Anthony Hopkins & Ryan Gosling, two of my favorites outsmarting each other, that was the hook.

And I wasn’t disappointed by their scenes together — the brilliant, sly defendant vs. the young, slick D.A. Hopkins and Gosling were fine.

But the plot’s turns that depend on The Law had me laughing and gagging again. The suspense and the payoffs rely on two bits of legalisms that are completely bogus.

The judge throws out a signed confession because one of the officers in the room had been having a secret love affair with the victim, the wife of the guy who confesses that he shot her. I could swallow the melodramatic stretch of this unlikely event. That's not what bothered me. But the law is wrong. No judge would find such a confession to be coerced on that evidence. Nope, uh-uh. Never happen in any court in the U.S.

The second supposedly surprising legal twist is that after the brilliant defendant is acquitted of attempted murder of his now comatose wife, he signs papers that get her plugs pulled and she dies. He thinks double jeopardy will prevent his re-trial. Uh-uh. Wrong again.

This was the same plot blunder made by an Ashley Judd film a few years ago callled "Double Jeopardy". Ashley was convicted of killing her husband when he vanished from their boat and while in prison, she discovers that he is still alive. She is released and goes to find him, confronts him and kills him, getting away with it because as we all know, "you can’t be punished twice for the same crime." Nope. Sorry. Not true. Never has been true. The law would simply apologize for its first mistake and lock you up again.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I get it that shortcuts and contrived plot devices are sometimes necessary to make a story work. I don’t mind it if the inaccuracies are incidental to the main point. But when it is the Big Twisteroo or when the movie is intended as a commentary on "The Legal System," artistic licenses should be revoked.