Mr. Brooks Review
By David Kempler
Stop me before I kill again
When I first heard that Kevin Costner was going to go against his goody two-shoes onscreen persona to play a deranged, evil killer I was intrigued. It would be interesting to see how it would turn out and had the potential to be a defining moment in his career. It turned out to be just that. Unfortunately, the defining moment turned out to be weak, and that is bending over backwards to be complimentary.
"Mr. Brooks" is a tale of a successful man (he wins the "Man of the Year" early in the film) who suffers from a horrendous affliction. He is addicted to being a serial killer. Written and directed by Bruce Evans, this waste of footage invents another phony disease, like we don't already have enough of those. It's a new RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome) New Age ailment. I apologize in advance to anyone who believes that they suffer from RLS.
While I truly grieve for those who so horribly suffer from SKA (Serial Killer Addiction), I feel far worse for the audiences who paid real money to watch this. Aside from the preposterous plot, we are also subjected to absolutely wooden performances from Costner as the title character and an unbelievably bad turn from Demi Moore as Detective Terry Atwood, who is determined to break this case. It is hard to determine whether her character was poorly written, poorly acted, or whether Moore was just poorly miscast. Does it matter?
Mr. Brooks has taken a few years off from murdering people he doesn't know but his evil alter-ego, Marshall (William Hurt) is determined to help Mr. Brooks revive his killing spree. Evans presents us this alter-ego as Marshall sitting next to Mr. Brooks and having conversations with him that no one else can hear and of course cannot see as well. The result is a comical mess with the audience unclear as whether to laugh or be frightened. A few unscripted bursts of laughter at the performance I attended were actually welcome relief from the long bouts of boredom. The only one who seemed to enjoy any of this is Hurt in a performance that he could have mailed in, but he is a professional and his glee in torturing the main character is amusing.
One other character has to be mentioned because it is so far beyond belief to be almost surreal. Mr. Smith (Dane Cook) finds out Mr. Brooks' secret early in the proceedings and his reaction is to want to train alongside Mr. Brooks and become a master serial killer too. His apprenticeship ends as you might expect.
Kevin Costner should now be fully ready to resume his incredibly earnest good-guy roles after at least showing the courage to extend his acting chops. He tried. He failed. The movie failed. The silver lining is that we can now look forward to the commercials and telethons to address SKA. Won't you please help?
