Kevin Costner
stars as Earl Brooks – a well known and respected Oregon
philanthropist and businessman (he’s
kind of like Donald Trump, but SUPER EVIL and more skilled with a comb). However, in the dark of
night, he is the
notorious Thumbprint Killer. One
evening,
when the need to kill is too strong to ignore, he finds a young couple,
follows
them home, and carries out his evilly brilliant strategy to kill them,
take
erotic photos for his own pleasure and clean up, so no trace of
evidence is
left behind. Yet,
he makes one mistake,
and it might be the one that exposes his double life.
Has someone seen
Mr. Brooks? Will he
be captured by the
detective, Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore), who has been chasing him?
Mr.
Brooks eschews
the CSI-style
mystery and investigation you might be looking for, and delivers
more of a soap opera-like story about everyone’s personal
lives, whether you
find that interesting or not, and whether these lurid details are
important to
the plot or not.
Director/co-writer
Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon provide a movie that can be scary at
times, but
often falls into camp and comedy, when that might not be the intention
(or, at
the least, takes the steam out of the creepy tone).
They do a wonderful job showing us Brooks’
methods, intelligence, his sick feelings about what he is doing, and
make him
squirm a bit when the tide turns against him.
However, Evans and Gideon pack the movie with plenty
of filler that
eventually finds its way into the story, but isn’t all that
compelling or
important to the main mystery.
For example, the
audience gets stuck watching all of the histrionics surrounding
Atwood’s
personal life and divorce. Then, we get some story about
Brooks and his daughter, Jane (Danielle Panabaker), which could have
been a
good movie on its own, but is minimally played out here for a couple of
cheap
thrills.
Finally, we have a storyline about
Brooks’
yang to his ying (consider this character to be temptation or the devil
on his
shoulder), which can be interesting half of the time, intentionally
funny a
quarter of the time, and of the wrong tone the other quarter. It’s plenty of
stuff, but not all of it is
relevant.
Sadly, Mr.
Brooks
is taken down a few steps by Dane Cook, who plays a man who gets
involved with
Brooks in a way I don’t want to give away here.
For most of the movie, you have to wonder if Cook
was brought in for
badly conceived comic relief, or is he so out of his element you start
to laugh at him? Cook
seems to be the
same mode he is in for his stand up comedy routine – an
over-energized rocker
growling his lines. While
he’s not
supposed to be the most accomplished or brightest of characters in the
movie,
he should make the character less of a buffoon, and a bit more
realistic. He’s
a good comedian, but as an actor, he’s a
good comedian.
Meanwhile,
Costner does everything he can to carry Mr.
Brooks.
I have always liked Costner, and consider him
to be one of the most underrated actors out there (the kind of guy who
gets
mocked when he might not always deserve it).
He never goes for the melodramatic (Cook should have
paid a bit more
attention to learn how that’s done) and makes Mr. Brooks a
suave tortured soul
who almost becomes the movie’s anti-hero.
Most of all, he brings the character to life in a
way the writers
clearly want – he is a guy you have to admire for his
intellect, but deplore
him for how he uses it.
Mr.
Brooks needs
some help, but you’ll see worse.
1 ½
Waffles (Out of 4)
Mr.
Brooks is
rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content,
nudity and language.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com