MOVIE REVIEW: 'Mr. Brooks'


From the Friday, June 1 Oregonian ….




You could almost describe "Mr. Brooks" as "'The Talented Mr. Ripley' for Dummies."

This silly but weirdly entertaining thriller stars Kevin Costner as the titular Earl Brooks, a Portland-based CEO. He has a loving wife and daughter, a penchant for bow ties and, oh yes, a barely repressed compulsion to stalk and murder complete strangers.

The movie opens as "the hunger has returned to Mr. Brooks' brain." Egged on by his invisible alter ego (played by a loopier-than-usual William Hurt), Earl commits his first murder in two years.

But he's caught in the act by a doofus (Dane Cook) with an odd blackmail offer: The doofus won't turn Earl in to the cops if he can ride shotgun during Earl's next killing.

It's a fairly interesting premise for a thriller, even if Costner doesn't always seem as anxious as the situation merits. But what pushes "Mr. Brooks" into "silly" territory is the way co-writer/director Bruce A. Evans piles on way too many subplots that seem to set up future stories. (Costner has said this is Part One of a planned "Brooks" trilogy, if the film finds fans.)

To wit: Earl's daughter (Danielle Panabaker) gets caught up in her own murder mystery. And then there's the millionaire cop (Demi Moore) being stalked by yet another serial killer, even as she's distracted by her divorce…. By the time everything comes together, the coincidences make it feel like there are about five people living in Portland, and half of them are murderers.

But if you can roll with the over-the-top plotting -- and no jury would convict you if you couldn't -- "Mr. Brooks" does have its pleasures. Evans shoots the Costner/Hurt conversations in an artful, strange way; there's one great funny-creepy moment when the two burst out laughing simultaneously. And Cook turns his frat-boy stand-up persona on its ear as a spoiled idiot looking for kicks.

Once Cook gets his ride-along and the story gets moving, there's just something pleasantly bizarre about being asked to root for Costner as a psychopathic freak and a sedate family man and a tormented soul and a cool-headed master of disguise, with very little connecting the personas. In other words, the movie's not good, strictly speaking, but it is kind of fun.
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C; 120 minutes; rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, nudity and language.

'Mr. Brooks' (The Oregonian, June 1, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - June 1, 2007 at 12:00 AM        

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