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Mr Brooks (2007)
Director: Bruce A. Evans
Movie review
From Time Out New York
A cat-and-mouse thriller starring…Kevin Costner and Demi Moore? Seriously, did the ’90s never happen? You’d expect some retro-pleasure in watching Costner, easing into his éminence grise phase, and the conspicuously youthful-looking Moore (there’s a Dorian Gray portrait of her stashed away somewhere) doing the whole genius-sociopath-vs.-dogged-cop routine. Writer-director Bruce A. Evans, however, delivers nothing but consistent buzzkills. Most suspense flicks necessitate a slight suspension of disbelief to work; this movie requires jettisoning both logic and part of your frontal lobe to be even semifunctional.It’s too bad, since Costner obviously relishes playing a dapper businessman with a dark side; his verbal sparring with wanna-be murderer Dane Cook, and William Hurt, cast as the chattiest id this side of Tyler Durden, displays the actor’s facility for gallows humor. But Evans keeps flirting with a potentially rich idea—serial killing as a bourgeois drug addiction, complete with relapses and heredity—only to surround it with indigestible amounts of silliness. A subplot involving another escaped lunatic exists only to justify Seven-style set pieces, and by the time Costner dons a disguise straight out of Deadwood (don’t ask), you’ll wish everyone behind the camera were half as methodically disciplined as the OCD-afflicted title character.
Author: David Fear
Time Out New York Issue 609: May 31–June 6, 2007
User reviews of this film
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- N Alana said...
- Posted on Mar 22 2008 16:24 I disagree with these reviews. I thought the film was brilliant - an 'on the edge of your seat' psychological thriller which had me gripped until the end. Although the rather horrific content did make feel a little bit uncomfortable. I also thought the ending could have been a bit better/clearer as although there were suggestions we were left in suspense of what the future would hold for the family. For me it ended a bit abruptly, but I would recommend it.
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- Nicole Collet said...
- Posted on Nov 25 2007 01:20 This was the worst film I've seen in a long time. It started very conventional and cliche, and it got worse and worse by the minute. The characters are puddle deep, acting is contrived, plot and sub plots are another load of umplausable cliches, the music is atrocious. I watched it until the bitter end just to see how such mess would conclude, and then I got so irritated I had to watch another film to forget this one. What a waste of time! It beats me that this piece of crap still gets some good reviews. By the way, if I could I would rate it with negative stars.
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- Andrew Bolton said...
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Posted on Oct 22 2007 06:48
This is a dreadful, gratuitous, amoral, dirty little glossy piece of nonsense film.Riddled with incnsitencies and non-starters, it's hard to know where to start to pick it to pieces.The worst thing, is that none of the characters have any kind of believable history. The stupid police woman(Demi Moore)happens to be a multi-millionairess who just happens to put her life on the line daily, the silly daughter who somehow happens to have inherited her father's psychopathy, and where does the Costner character himself get his murderous 'addiction' from.
It doesnt just happen.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. - Report as inappropriate
Cast & crew
Director: Bruce A. Evans
Producer: Kevin Costner, Raynold Gideon, Jim Wilson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, William Hurt, Dane Cook, Marg Helgenberger, Danielle Panabaker full cast
Rated: R
Duration: 120 mins
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