- Running time:
- 121 minutes
- Rated:
- R
- Cast:
- Kevin Costner -
- Mr. Brooks
- Demi Moore -
- Tracy Atwood
- Dane Cook -
- Mr. Smith
- William Hurt -
- Marshall
- Marg Helgenberger -
- Emma Brooks
(0 ratings)
Chalk that up to a pair of factors that elevate the film slightly above lurid Cinemax-after-midnight guilty pleasures: a healthy amount of gallows humor and Kevin Costner's multi-dimensional, image-tweaking lead performance.
On the outside, Earl Brooks appears to be the kind of all-American do-gooder that earned Costner fame throughout the '90s—devoted to career and family, respected by the community, prone to wearing dorky bow ties and drinking lots of milk. But what no one knows about Brooks is that he's the cold-blooded Thumbprint Killer, whose addiction to murdering is egged on by an imaginary enabler (William Hurt). Things get more complicated when a witness (comedian Dane Cook) blackmails Brooks into providing a lesson in the tricks of the serial-killing trade.
Costner, who keeps getting better with age, offers an acting master class as the reluctant psychopath. Fluctuating between tongue-in-cheek irony and palpable anguish, his blue eyes signaling both false joviality and threatening menace, the actor has an assured handle on the anti-hero's complexities.
Unfortunately, the movie around his unconventional star turn tends to get overcrowded and overly familiar. Subplots involving Brooks' college-drop-out daughter (Danielle Panabaker) and the cop (Demi Moore) on his trail cover well-trod ground and inflate the running time to two hours.
Any film driven by grisly gore, morbid laughs, gratuitous sex and synth-heavy music just doesn't need to be longer than 105 minutes. Disreputable cheese shouldn't be so ponderous.
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Movie theaters and showtimes for Mr. Brooks in Los Angeles.
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