MR. BROOKS
Persona: A History Of Violence, A Lifetime Of Suppression
The Popcorn Reel Movie Review:
"Mr. Brooks"
By Omar P.L. Moore/May 28, 2007
William Hurt (as Marshall) and Kevin Costner (as Earl) share an Ingmar Bergman
"Persona" moment in "Mr. Brooks", which opens on Friday in the United States.
(Photo: Ben Glass/Lift Productions)
"Mr. Brooks", which opens this Friday, June
1 across America, places Kevin Costner in the relatively unfamiliar role of
anti-hero, which he has enjoyed in only a handful of films during his
illustrious career. One of those films was Clint Eastwood's "A Perfect
World" (1993), in which Mr. Costner deftly and efficiently played a criminal who
had no time to rationalize. He just did.
In this new film, Mr. Costner is Earl Brooks, Portland's Man Of The Year, for
reasons that are not especially clear, other than that his business is a
successful one. He has a beautiful and wonderfully loyal wife (Marg
Helgenberger) and an intelligent daughter (Danielle Panabaker), and has one big
issue: a split personality, or voice within (William Hurt) that drives him to
kill compulsively. Earl is on a one-way ticket to hell and is portrayed as
a sick man, a sociopath and a family man all rolled into one. To some
degree director Bruce A. Evans has done something that this threadbare film
hardly deserves: combined odd comic touches with a sympathetic presentation of
an anguished, blood-drenched soul that should have burned long ago. Mr.
Brooks has been killing people in cold blood for longer than he remembers, but
his alter ego Marshall (Mr. Hurt) knows each and every victim, reciting the
faces in his dreams and fantasies. Marshall is the driver of Earl's
killing limousine and the only wheels it has are the ones churning inside Earl's
tortured mind.
Marshall is a campy, cheery nuisance who becomes a guilty pleasure to Earl.
The audience sees Marshall as the voice of Earl's alter ego, which is important
because the other actors who play on this small stage of a film do not.
Mr. Hurt gets to be as campy and appealing in his role as Marshall as he was in
his Academy Award-nominated turn in David Cronenberg's "A History Of Violence"
(2005), and the two films' story threads are very similar, except that here the
family never finds out that Earl's a serial-killing sociopath. "Mr.
Brooks" captures Earl about to kill a couple (and there of course is no reason
why.) After losing a mental battle with Marshall over his promise of never
killing again, he is soon killing them and leaving a distinctive fingerprint,
tying him to a long-unsolved list of serial murders.
Enter Demi Moore, as Detective Tracy Atwood, a veteran police detective whose
hard-nosed persistence to solve the most notorious murder cases in her
illustrious career is on this occasion interrupted only by two things: her
impending divorce and a scruffy peeping-Tom photographer (Dane Cook) in the
mould of Hitchcock's Jimmy Stewart character in "Rear Window", except Mr. Cook's
character Mr. Smith is reckless in his desire to kill. He wants Mr. Brooks
to drive him "Cops"-style on a killing expedition to witness Earl's exploits, or
else the photos Smith has taken of the sex couple double-murder will be revealed
to the police.
These are the bare bones facts of
"Mr. Brooks", a film which is best when William Hurt graces the screen and hams
it up in an subtle but effective way. He is loud with his quiet
mannerisms, he is quiet in his own evil machinations. Mr. Costner on the
other hand, has the more difficult role. He has to strip himself down as
Earl, portraying the subtlety of a family man whose family is falling apart at
the seams even as his own dysfunction and psychosis have become twisted.
Years ago, even before Hitchcock's Norman Bates, a reviewer may have been
forgiven for thinking that people like Earl Brooks didn't exist. As we
have seen too often in the world however, they certainly do.
Marg Helgenberger (as Emma), Kevin Costner (as Earl) and Danielle Panabaker (as
Jane) in "Mr. Brooks", directed by Bruce A. Evans which opens on Friday in the
United States. (Photo: Ben Glass/Element Funding)
Suspension of disbelief isn't a problem where "Mr. Brooks" is
concerned, but it becomes a huge challenge when the barely-fleshed out story of
Earl's daughter rears its head almost two-thirds of the way through. Mr.
Evans and Raynold Gideon's script could have dug deeper into the relationship
between Earl and his daughter Jane, but then several scenes, including one that
packs a particular jolt, wouldn't have their eerie and disturbing effect.
Costner has to be commended for trying to make Earl as a character work; and he
just about prevails. The interplay between Mr. Hurt and Mr. Costner is
riveting at times, and the acting that they and Mr. Cook do as a trio in several
scenes in Earl's car as they decide who they should kill next -- with only Earl
aware of the presence of both characters in the car -- is a treat to watch.
Beyond that however, the film, which pulses with techno and electronic beat
music, sounds signifying a sexiness and style in the thrill of kill, falls apart
like a stilted deck of playing cards. Ms. Moore's Detective Atwood
character enjoys little raison d'etre and does a better job at being aggressive
and wound very tightly than Peter Falk ever did at being Columbo.
Characters like the detective and Mr. Smith exist in "Mr. Brooks" only to
illustrate the implied premise that everybody has murder on the mind, just
varying degrees of a desire to see a life end. The film's subplot
involving a serial killer whom Atwood put behind bars several years ago is meant
to parallel or rival Mr. Brooks as a bloodthirsty killing machine -- and Brooks
is someone whom Atwood has never in her dozen or so years as a top detective had
the privilege of encountering. Still, she is close, and yet so far from
him -- which precisely describes the function of having another serial killer
roaming around in Mr. Evans' film. The character doesn't much serve the
overall story, which itself drifts to a predictable conclusion.
Of all the characters in this film, Marg Helgenberger's Emma Brooks character is
the most beguiling and perplexing. As the wife of Mr. Brooks she is
absolutely clueless in their 20-year marriage. Even though there are
people in real-life who live dual lives in a marriage without ever being
exposed, it takes some stretching in this film to believe that Emma isn't at
least suspicious of Earl. Wives who have lived with their husbands for
20 years or more would be expected to intuit something about Earl's habits and
practices, wouldn't they? Maybe not. But if Mary Beth Hurt's
character can suspect Nick Searcy's husband character of wrongdoing in Karen
Moncrieff's "The Dead Girl", then why on earth can't Emma do the same in Mr.
Evans' film? (Is she not as intelligent a character in a male director's
screenplay? Or is she in deep denial and disbelief?)
And Mr. Cook's character has little else to invest in as far as the story goes.
The incentives and benefits for Mr. Smith are minimal indeed. He is a
lonely, self-centered figure, apparently unemployed, and as anti-social as they
come -- desperate for companionship, so much so that his need for human
connection comes in the desire to bond via witnessing a serial killer kill.
He gets his rocks off, but not the way that you may be thinking. Mr.
Cook's Mr. Smith is some kind of lonely. Meanwhile, Earl seeks absolution
for his condition, but it is clear that he is way beyond helping. Some of
these scenes and similar ones are played more for laughs than anything else.
The religious appeal for Earl's redemption seem both half-hearted and convenient
in "Mr. Brooks", and the moral dilemmas preceding it seem out of kilter and
tacked on from another film.
In the final analysis, "Mr. Brooks" is a perfect example of a film that is good
enough to be interesting but not interesting enough to be anything more.
Had Mr. Evans' film focused more in-depth on the relationship between Earl, Emma
and Jane Brooks instead of almost exclusively on the machinations of Earl and
his alter ego, there may have been more complexity and less predictability for
audiences to mull over.
Dane Cook as Mr. Smith, and Demi Moore as Detective Tracy Atwood in Bruce A.
Evans' film "Mr. Brooks", which opens on Friday, June 1 in North America.
(Photo: Ben Glass/Element Funding)
"Mr. Brooks" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of
America for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, nudity and
language. There are jolts of violence, and the sex scene in the film is
less graphic than it is racy. The film's duration is two hours.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2007. All Rights
Reserved.