Dec

31

Mister Brooks: or, A Beautiful Murder by Numbers

December 31, 2007 |

Sometimes something turns up on DVD that completely passed you by when it was in the theatres, but when you finally catch up with it you understand why you never heard about it.  This is one of those times.

There’s a terribly wrong sickness inside this weird little inside-a-serial-killer’s-head movie. The chief symptom of the disorder is, unfortunately, the presence of the weirdly intolerable Demi Moore, whose presence in the whole thing makes you think it was a joint vanity project between Moore and movie-disaster maker Kevin Costner, that sucked in a number of other faces you’d know, none of whom deserved to be seen on a big screen in something this unflattering and muddled. But this time out, it’s not clear that the blame for a cinematic mess should be laid at Costner’s feet.

On screen, at least, he does a creditable job as the eponymous murder-addicted cardboard box maker and businessman of the year. He struggles with his conscience, attending AA meetings and swearing off his personal vice; but he also grapples with William Hurt, who embodies the alter ego that whispers inside (and outside) his head, exhorts and coaches him on to one killing after another. (Don’t dissect the psychology of this too deeply– it’s kind of “A Beautiful Mind” meets “Silence of the Lambs”, with Hurt as Costner’s own personal Hannibal. Makes no sense, but can be entertaining to watch.)

There’s eye-candy aplenty, if you like interior design– successful boxmakers to the world apparently have limitless profits to blow on uber-chic home and office space, not to mention putting a shamefully-spoiled little girl through Stanford (or, at least, an unnamed university on University Avenue in Palo Alto). The main plot has more than enough double-helix twists to satisfy: a voyeur who witnesses one of Brooks’ killings makes a blackmail demand you won’t see coming, and daughter dearest proves to have more than just an Electra complex binding her with her doting daddy. And Costner and Hurt’s tug-of-war is diverting enough, if you like serial-killer movies, which I really rather do. It’s especially fun that Costner sometimes doesn’t seem to need but so much arm-twisting to be convinced to kill… certain people.

But alas, this is only about 2/3 of the movie. The other third follows Demi Moore, as a hard-ass lone-wolf serial killer-hunting profiler, with her own father issues, $60M in the bank, a messy divorce from her soon-to-be-ex toyboy in progress, and a previous serial-killer conquest fresh out of jail and hot on her tail.

The improbable ways in which the cop subplots intersect with the main plot undermine the shaky but entertaining concept. Plot threads should twist, (k)not furl or tangle; someone should have reminded the writers and producers that less is mo(o)re.

But the bigger problem is the fact that Demi Moore and her character are here at all. Of course, in such a movie there has to be a cop, but why this cop? Why this character, and why, for God’s sake, cast Demi Moore? Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt would surely have been too expensive, but couldn’t they have just borrowed Lance Henriksen for a couple of days? (Or even that chick from Profiler?) Demi is hideously miscast and miswritten so out of place in every way that you’re left thinking she, or someone close to her, must have had enough money in the project to insist on a rewrite to create a lead role for her.

There was almost a satisfying, if silly, little movie here. If you see this go by on cable, go ahead and peek at it, if you like this sort of thing. But expect something like the Hudson Hawk of serial killer movies– the more it all comes together, the more it all comes apart.

(Which reminds me– Hudson Hawk would be a perfect film to review here… as would The President’s Analyst, another twisted favorite of mine.)


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