Mr. Brooks

Posted by Nathan Deen (nathan@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 7, 2007

“Mr. Brooks” is a bold and unique idea for a character study; no question about that. It gives you a interesting insight into the mind of a serial killer by throwing a schizophrenic or multiple personality syndrome twist into the mix. It’s mostly entertaining, but unfortunately the script of this thriller is overly complex and sloppy.

I wanted so much to like this movie but it’s just too poorly executed. It’s tough to resist the dark side, which is the theme of this film, and give this a thumbs up, but I’m not going soft. There are definitely issues to be dealt with here.

I will say what a great and intriguing performance Kevin Costner gives, as does William Hurt. They make a great one-two punch and try to play the life jacket role and keep this film from sinking. They almost make “Mr. Brooks,” irresistible. Almost.

Costner plays Earl Brooks, a successful business man who has just been named Portland’s (Oregon) man of the year. He has a beautiful caring wife, Emma (Marg Helgenberger) and a beautiful daughter, Jane (Danielle Panabaker).

That’s only who he is on the cover but in actuality he has another personality: a compulsive serial killer that’s been straight for two years and just can’t resist the urge to kill again. He has an inner demon/imaginary friend named Marshall (William Hurt) that drives him to kill. Mr. Brooks’ killer identity to the public is the Thumb-Print Killer and after lying low for two years, he’s ready to strike again.

He scopes out a couple (it’s usually couples with him), quietly breaks into their house and kills them while they’re making love. He’s an expert and leaves no traces of himself but he overlooks one loose end. The couple likes to make love with the curtains open and some of the attendants of the apartment complex across the street like to catch a peep show every once in a while.

Costner walks into his office the next day and finds one of the attendants waiting for him, a young man who calls himself Mr. Smith (Dane Cook). Smith has pictures of Costner killing the couple. One would think Cook plays the constantly in danger witness role but instead he asks Mr. Brooks to let him join him on his next killing and in return he won’t go to the police.

Demi Moore plays Tracy Atwood, the detective in charge of the case. Atwood is involved in too many subplots. One covers her current divorce that keeps slowing her down because her husband is being a thorn in her side. I don’t know how much of a thorn he could be considering she’s worth $60 million dollars and he’s asking for $5 million. I don’t even want to get started on the fact she’s a millionaire and a cop at the same time. Another subplot concerns a serial killer, one whom she arrested, escaping from jail and vowing to kill her.

This is a two hour film that could have been cut 15 minutes or so shorter and lose none of its appeal. Perhaps Costner should have directed the film as well. Writer/Director Bruce A. Evans and co-writer Raynold Gideon should have let Costner lead the way but they never quite let him take over the film. If Costner had directed, he would have owned every frame of it.

Some of the film’s problems lie with the characters of Detective Atwood and Mr. Smith. It’s not the acting by Demi Moore and Dane Cook that’s necessarily the problem, it’s the storyline that follows them.

Atwood is involved in way too many subplots and appears in a few too many scenes. Consequently, she steals time away from Costner. The film spends so much time with Atwood handling her divorce and tracking down the Hangman killer (the killer who escaped from jail), it gets to the point where the viewer has to say “Who cares?” Moore’s character should only appear when progress is made on the case of Costner’s Thumb-print Killer. If one or two of these subplots were dropped, the script would have been shorter and more concise, and the movie might actually be good.

Then with Cook’s Mr. Smith, you think and expect Dane Cook to be the witness to the investigation that wants to blackmail Mr. Brooks or have some kind of agenda but I guess writers Evans and Gideon thought that would have been to much by the book. So instead they make him an inspiring serial killer that wants Mr. Brooks to show him the ropes (I guess that is a form of blackmail but not the kind you’d expect.) I think that’s just silly and although the blackmail agenda would be predictable, it would have made the script tighter and more believable.

It almost seems like every character you meet in “Mr. Brooks” wants to be a serial killer and everything just keeps getting more and more preposterous. It’s like it’s trying to tell us there’s a serial killer in all of us and that’s even more preposterous. The audience needs someone to relate to in this movie and let them know the world hasn’t gone cuckoo. Marg Helgenberger would be that character if she was given more than 10 minutes of meaningful screen time.

Finally, Costner’s portrayal of a serial killer is a hard thing to get across to the audience because it’s asking us to care and have sympathy. Yes, the performance is of outstanding effort, but I’d imagine many viewers wouldn’t buy the sympathy part. Most importantly, it asks us to sympathize without fully explaining why Mr. Brooks is the way he is. We know he’s messed up but there’s not enough history and detail. You can’t have a good character study without fully answering that question in as much detail as possible. This is another flaw that could blamed on the subplots that Demi Moore is in.

This is a very mediocre effort in storytelling, but the movie itself looks good and is mostly watchable. It’s just missing that element to push the threshold of a good film. Or you could argue it has too many of them. I’d say drop the Demi Moore subplots and add a little extra detail to Mr. Brooks’ character and you got yourself a better movie.

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