Thursday, May 31, 2007

Mr. Brooks - Movie Review, Or, I Should Have Just Snuck Into Knocked Up

Kevin Costner, Demi Moore and William Hurt. What is this? The 80's? Was Dane Cook only put in to remind us that it is, in fact, the 21st Century now? I wish I had gone to see Knocked Up instead last night but sadly, I got preview tickets for Mr. Brooks instead. Which sounded good way back when, when I first read a description, then looked bad when I actually saw some clips, and in the end, the movie lands somewhere in between.

Kevin Constner plays Mr. Brooks, an upstanding and successful man-of-the-year winner who has a secret past as a serial killer, spurned on by the voice in his head, who we see is played by William Hurt. Mr. Brooks never kills anybody he knows, so we know wife Marg Helgenberger is safe, as is his college drop-out daughter who may have her own secret.

Mr. Brooks makes his first killing in two years, and is caught by a Mr. "Smith" played by unfunny comedian Dane Cook in a serious dramatic role. Demi Moore is the rich cop (yeah, they will try to explain it but it ended up being lame) investigating the case, and with about 4 storylines too many, the whole thing comes to a convoluted mess after a nice moody start. The multiple threads don't really tie together as brilliantly as one would have hoped which disappoints at the end. Demi Moore and Kevin Costner never even share a frame together, with their stories barely tying together. The jolts of suspense and violence are not as well earned as they think, and somewhat gratuitous and gross. Only the discussions between William Hurt as Mr. Brooks evil consciousness gives the movie any earned depth. Still, the whole thing isn't as trashy as I thought it might have ended up and one could argue that it deserves a better grade.

Still, I'm giving Mr. Brooks = C or 5.5/10

2 comments:

Unknown said...

So, basically what you mean is you didn't understand the movie at all. How could you say this is a bad movie??

No tie between Costner's and Moore's part of the story? you must be joking.
- she was the detective trying to catch him
- he had an sort of thought that he still wanted to be caught so he could never kill again
- his alter ego (Marshall) wanted to kill Demi the entire time, but his good side would never do such a thing
- in the end he kills her EX in order for his good side to try to give her more clues about how to catch him so she could stop him from killing
- his alter-ego basically sets it up to frame her for the murder of her ex while his good side calls her at the end to let her know the killer is still out there.

You like you said, i'm judging you on what you watch, and i think you need to watch this one again and pay attention to the deeper meaning of how costner struggles with his addiction and how he ends up worse than he begins, even after "solving" (killing) the problem. His real fear is now his daughter having the same addiction that he has.

Unknown said...

not to beat a dead horse, but this movie was much better than Knocked Up