Plays like Red Dragon reimagined by filmmakers who think they're too smart or too sophisticated or too high-minded to give themselves over to the sordid, sleazy and flat-out nasty.
Mr. Brooks (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:149
Fresh:83
Rotten:66
Average Rating:5.7/10
Consensus: The setup is intriguing, but Mr. Brooks overstuffs itself with twists and subplots, becoming more preposterous as it goes along.
Rated: 18 [See Full Rating] for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, nudity and language.
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Detectives, Switching Roles, Thriller, Murder, Theatrical Release, Crime, Serial Killers
Theatrical Release:12-10-2007
Synopsis: Kevin Costner stars as Earl Brooks, a man whose seemingly perfect family and status in the community hide an ugly secret. Brooks constantly says the plea of an addict--the Serenity Prayer--but he's... Kevin Costner stars as Earl Brooks, a man whose seemingly perfect family and status in the community hide an ugly secret. Brooks constantly says the plea of an addict--the Serenity Prayer--but he's not in the grip of drugs or alcohol. Instead, his neat little bow tie belies a man with an urge to kill. Though he's staved off that desire for two years, it has returned thanks to the efforts of his evil inner voice (William Hurt, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE). He is caught in the act by a man who calls himself Mr. Smith (Dane Cook, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH), but Mr. Smith doesn't want to turn Brooks in. The smarmy amateur photographer wants to learn from Brooks's methodical ways and become a killer himself. Meanwhile, a tough cop (Demi Moore, BOBBY) hunts for the man responsible for deaths all over Portland while she deals with issues in her own life. MR. BROOKS presents a fascinating portrait of a man at war with himself. As the devil on Brooks's shoulder, Oscar winner Hurt adeptly alternates between menace and glee, adding to a resume already replete with varied roles. Though Costner is mostly known for playing nice guys (FIELD OF DREAMS) and charming rogues (BULL DURHAM), his performance as the tortured killer is interesting to watch, and he rises to the challenge of playing a completely different character than the kind he is known for. MR. BROOKS is an engaging thriller that goes into the fractured mind of a murderer, while also delivering an intriguing maze of multiple subplots. [More]
Starring: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook
Starring: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Marg Helgenberger, Jason Lewis, Yasmine Delawari, Michael Cole
Director: Bruce A. Evans
Director: Bruce A. Evans
Screenwriter: Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon
Producer: Kevin Costner, Raynold Gideon, Jim Wilson
Studio: MGM
Reviews for Mr. Brooks
Quite a few plot lines and character quandaries remain unresolved. And yet the movie makes sense as it stands. After all, one can never know what makes a psychopath tick.
Certainly more genuinely creepy than many recent thrillers, and the supporting cast is effective.
The movie is a missed opportunity. It has all the ingredients of a delightfully twisted, sleek little thriller. But with all that extra padding, Mr. Brooks is just one bloated mess.
Turns out, Portland has more serial and spree killers than coffee shops -- there are still more that figure into the movie's increasingly ludicrous narrative.
You know you're in real trouble when Demi Moore's playing the most sympathetic character you have.
Please don’t tell me it was supposed to be played for laughs all along, because I don’t buy it. Too late to save it from doom, the twists and snafus in Mr. Brooks start coming too fast for the audience to absorb, and the movie turns delusional.
A clumsy and facile pulp thriller that is never the sum total of its parts.
Preposterous as Mr. Brooks can get, it's such a well-crafted, intricately devised thriller that its flaws are easy to forgive.
There are flashes of near-greatness here, and the moments of dramatic power and aura of moral ambiguity set it apart from just about every other movie out there this season.
Mr. Brooks has a crisp, clever script, lacings of black humour, heart-racing pacing and convincing performances.
In Mr. Brooks, Bruce A. Evans' fitfully subversive approach to the genre, we get a few fresh takes on the psychology of serial killing.
The film emerges as a subtle commentary on a disquieting aspect of our current culture -- a commentary on the nature of a masturbatory voyeurism and how it fosters heartlessness by turning other people into objects.
The kind of movie that rockets so far beyond the line of credibility and so deeply into the realm of utter stupidity, you start to wonder if the filmmakers aren't putting you on.
I count a baker's dozen of movie plots here, a tally so impressive that the qualifier -- all of them are inane -- seems almost ungenerous.
What starts out as a delightful black comedy and social commentary ends up, at best, as a guilty pleasure where I had a hard time sorting out the intentional from the unintentional laughs.
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