[1]

I’m gonna start things off by talking about the one thing that is much more important than acting——-LOOKS, so all you Kevin Costner fans, rally around me for a minute.  Kevin is not just fine, he is F_I_N_E. Oops, let me try that again. He is F-I-N-E. There, that’s much better. Aging has only made him look 10x’s better, but what happened to Hurt since the Accidental Tourist? Where is his hair? It must be all those women he was running around with.

Oh well, anyway, Kevin Costner pulls off a first rate performance as a Jeckyl and Hyde kind of a guy in the thriller Mr. Brooks.  He’s very cool, and has no problem keeping it as he goes around town hacking people up (after a two year cooling off period) while posing as a CEO of a box company. Well, maybe I shouldn’t make him sound like Jason Voorhees, because he’s not, he just has an addiction to killing, and he’s been getting away with it for a long time.

Mr. Brooks kills in correspondence to the sinister voice in his head which is represented by a man (William Hurt) in the flesh created for all us movie goers who need to know and see whats going on in the mind of a crazy guy trying to appear sane. Of course, what would any thriller be like without the overzealous detective who has spent a half a lifetime trying to catch the bad guy? In this case its Tracy Atwood played by Demi Moore (sigh, is she still around)? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with her, it just would have been nice to see a fresh face in that role.

Oh wait, I forgot, Detective Atwood is also going through a grueling divorce, to a much younger man, so yes, this part does fit Moore. After all, what Hollywood actress has more experience in robbing the cradle than Demi? No, there’s nothing wrong with it, men have been doing it for years, its just that now I realize that the part was meant for her.

Other scenarios in the movie that are kind of distracting are the other villain called “The Hangman” (Matt Schulze who breaks out of jail and eventually ends up going after Detective Atwood, the one who put him behind bars in the first place. Next, in comes a nosy photographer (Dane Cook) who has incriminating evidence against Brooks, and blackmails him into riding along on his next killing run. Oh, I can’t forget Brooks’s daughter (Danielle Panabaker) who comes home from college suddenly after her schoolmates are murdered.

Brooks suspects that she may have the homicide gene, but we really never find out, as this part of the story never gets developed. In the end Brooks end’s up getting away with everything and the dead “Hangman” ends up the scapegoat. I give this movie 2 stars for having an OK plot, plus and extra 1/2 star for Kevin Costner having the star role. If you don’t like the movie, you can just stare at him. Trust me, it works.