As anyone who has seen Robin Williams' performance in One Hour Photo can attest to, watching an actor play against typical casting can often times be brilliant, if maybe little creepy. We were used to seeing Williams overact and do zany things onstage as a comic, and when he took his act to the big screen, it was much the same. Eventually he started to do more serious work, but it wasn't until the aforementioned Photo, and Insomnia from the same year, that he went REALLY creep-tastic, and played characters that you watched and said, "Is that Robin Williams?" while your jaw hung open. Every once in awhile, you get performances like that from the most unexpected places, whether it be Brad Pitt playing a total idiot in Burn After Reading, or Danny Glover as (SPOILER ALERT) the killer in Switchback. That brings us to our latest film, Mr. Brooks.
Before I begin, let me state for the record that I do not like Kevin Costner's films. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like the guy. Bull Durham was OK, but Waterworld was a snooze-fest, Dances with Wolves was insulting to Native Americans everywhere and don't even get me started on The Bodyguard, much less his pathetic attempt at Robin Hood and his non-English accent. Seriously, watch Prince of Thieves and tell me Robin Hood doesn't sound like he's from Iowa and should be shucking corn. But then we have this film, where Costner is cast so against type, that, even when he pulls the trigger for the first time on his victims, you still can't believe it's him. He stars as Earl Brooks here, a wealthy self-made businessman and philanthropist, married to Marg Helgenberger (CSI, Species) and at the opening of the film, is about to receive the Man of The Year award from his local Chamber of Commerce. We then quickly learn that, through the power of A.A., Mr. Brooks has been fighting his addiction...to murder. For two years he's kept his blood-lust satiated, problem is, said blood-lust is walking around and talking to him in the form of William Hurt, whom he calls Marshall. Marshall is trying to get Brooks back on the murderous path, but Brooks wants to hang up his holster, so to speak. Brooks eventually caves to Marshall, whereupon they go and murder an attractive young couple while they are engaged in coitus. Unfortunately for Brooks, this couple liked to show off and left the curtains open, and the usually super careful Brooks is caught on film by sleazy Mr. Smith, played by sleazy Dane Cook, who blackmails Brooks into taking him under his wing on his next kill.
So sleazy, he has to live on pretty girls' farts.
Also in the mix is Demi Moore as Det. Tracy Atwood, who is hot on the trail of our killer, but is also having a personal crisis in the way of a divorce and if that wasn't enough, a crazed steroid freak who just escaped from jail is tracking her down. All this extra stuff seemed a little unnecessary at times, they could have left the whole steroid guy story line out of it, and it still would have worked just fine. Damn, I forgot there was a whole OTHER story line involving Brooks' daughter dropping out of college and coming home because of a pregnancy, which may be just a smokescreen for a murder SHE may have committed at the college. Now that I think about it, there were enough story lines weaving around for about three movies: you could have had the first movie be about Brooks and Smith, the second dealing with the daughter and round it out with the third being a showdown between Brooks and Atwood, but hey, what do I know. I read that this film was supposed to be the beginning to a trilogy, but it seems they smashed it all into one. It doesn't make the film a muddy mess, but it does take away from the pace of it, I wanted to see more of the Costner/Hurt dynamic, those two were great together on-screen.
Pretty hallowed company.
So, does this change my opinion of Kevin Costner? Probably not so much, this film was good, but he's got a long way to go. If he does more stuff like this, or maybe even darker, that will help with his redemption. Everyone else does a fine job, even Cook, it looks like the director said, "For this character, just be yourself." Hurt's performance is the best, though, you often forget that he is, in fact, all in Costner/Brooks' mind. The final few minutes of the film seemed a little contrived, but I didn't mind much.
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