It Came from Netflix: Mr. Brooks (2007)

Updated on December 26, 2007 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

Here There Be Spoilers:  However, the movie’s so lame that if I further dissuade you from watching it, I’ll have done my job.

Mr. Brooks is a thoroughly mediocre two-hour borefest hobbled by its own pretentions.  (And the fact that people will compare it to the TV show Dexter, which is reportedly much better.)   This is the kind of film where every good thing about it just makes the bad stuff all the more irritating.  When a film sucks in every way, you just figure the filmmakers were out of their depth.  Here, these guys, this amount of money?  They should have made a good movie.  They didn’t.

The biggest problem is that the film features like a zillion friggin’ subplots.  Imagine a character who has five novels written about him, and they decide to make a movie out of them, cramming everything from all five books into one film:

1)  Successful businessman, husband and father Mr. Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a brilliant movie serial killer.
2)  He talks to his psychological ‘other half’, Marshall, who is played by William Hurt.  Two good actors (yes, Costner can be good), and some interesting psychology—Marshall goads Brooks to kill (Brooks wants to quit), but Brooks himself is still the killer.  In other words, Marshall is the rider, but Brooks ‘himself’ actually does the killing.  This all gets buried, though, by all the other subplots.   The ‘two’ carry on conversations which are not heard by the other people in the scene, because they are actually taking place in Brooks’ head.  This conceit is a bit precious, but if they had stayed focused on it, it might have worked.  They don’t.
3)  Brooks is being hunted by police Dt. Atwood (Demi Moore).
4)  Atwood is both very, very rich (!!), and going through a nasty divorce with a money-grubbing gold-digger.  I think the fact that the gold-digger is a man is supposed to make Atwood more sympathetic.
5)  Meanwhile, a nasty spree killer Atwood previously arrested has escaped.
6)  Moreover, he’s looking to kill Atwood in revenge.
7)  Brooks has a beloved lay about daughter who comes home and confesses that she’s dropped out of college.
8)  And she’s pregnant.
9)  And she intends to get an abortion.
10)  Mr. Brooks tries to talk her out of it.
11)  She remains undecided.
12)  About halfway through the film we learn the daughter is also a killer, but rather more inept at covering up her crimes.
13)  Mr. Brooks must decide whether to try to help her out.
14)  Oh, yeah, super major subplot:  For no reason other than script contrivance, Mr. Brooks gets real lazy on his latest kill.  15)  Because of this, he is photographed. 
16) The guy with the pictures (Dane Cook, gag) doesn’t want money; he wants to help Mr. Brooks kill someone.
17)  Dane Cook gets increasingly petulant throughout the movie because Brooks keeps putting him off.
18)  Atwood thinks Dane Cook knows more than he lets on.

Oh, my, there’s more, but whatever. 

In order to draw all these plotlines together, the movie resorts to several mind-hurting coincidences, such as when Brooks is scoping out potential victims with Dane Cook, and who should drive into the exact same parking lot for no reason, but the escaped spree killer out to kill Atwood.  Well, that’s convenient.

The film desperately wants to be complex and hip, like The Usual Suspects, and fails utterly.  Like most films like this, they would have been far better served to pick one or two storylines (serial killer gets blackmailed, or serial killer learns beloved daughter is also a killer) and just run with that.  Not only do we get the annoying coincidences, but an utterly retarded ‘shock’ ending, followed by a even more retarded twist—guess what, the apparent twist ending was ONLY A DREAM!!!!

Then, they follow by leaving several plotlines yet left gaping so as provide for a sequel.  Considering how annoyed I was by the film, the idea that it was actually announcing that they intended to follow it up pissed me off.  They didn’t earn the right.  And the way they set it up!!!  Brooks manages to frame somebody else to look like the killer, meaning he’s off the hook for his crimes.  So what does he do?  He calls Det. Atwood for a very implausible reason, just so that for no justifable reason she can be allowed to  suspect that maybe the real killer is still out there.  This is about the most insultingly stupid thing I’ve seen in a mainstream movie in a long time.

Oh, and then there’s the supposedly cool gunfight Atwood gets into.  She’s in a hallway, with two other people down the hall shooting at her.  She’s having trouble hitting them, so instead she leans out and starts shooting out all the florescent light bulbs lighting the hallway!!!  Because it’s easier to hit a receding, increasingly distant line of small tubes than full-grown people standing 15 or 20 feet away from you.  Then, and HERE’S WHERE IT GETS REALLY BITCHIN’, because the hallway is now plunged into absolute darkness, we get an entire gunfight lit strobe fashion by the gunflashes.

I really wanted to punch somebody by that point. This is the sort of movie that has no right, given all the resources at its command, to stink this bad.  Seriously, who greenlit this thing?  You suck.  Middle of the road, boring big studio filming at its lame worst.  Not even bad enough to entertain.  What a waste.

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  • BeckoningChasm

    Hey, Ken, quit being all vague and stuff–tell us what you really think.

    :)

  • I can’t help it, this is exactly the sort of movie that gets my goat. I actually like and enjoy the vast majority of films I review here, but these needlessly-stupid-big-studio films just push my buttons.

    It’s not even that bad, objectively. It has a 55% positive rating at Rottentomatoes.com. It’s just in the ways it is bad, there should have been somebody in the process screaming, “Simplify! Simplify!” Tens of millions of bucks, down the drain.

    Also, its faults accumulate toward the end, so that the further along it goes, the worse it gets. That’s not a recipie for a happy viewer.

  • I thought Costner and Hurt were great in the film and played off one another perfectly. If only the movie had been about this guy trying to supress his serial killer side it could have been really good, but all the garbage involving the Demi Moore cop (the ending of that car chase in particular) and the even worse subplots involving his equally deranged daughter killed any chance the movie had. The dream ending was the final insult.

    And Ken, I have to penalize you here for completely failing to mention (and mock) the moronic ending of the car chase where Demi Moore went flying from the vehicle in an almost comical fashion. I recall sitting in the theater when that happened and nearly doing a spittake because up until then the film had at least some pretention of being taken seriously and that scene was straight out of a dumb action comedy.

  • sardu

    Yikes. And to think I have had several friends recommend this movie to me. Needless to say, I trust your judgment more. Alas, I may still have to rent it and see for myself. Sometimes I enjoy indulging in an Orwellian 90 Minute Hate directed at Hollywood. This sounds like a good one for that.

  • Scott is correct, both that the film shamelessly wasted two very good actors–the only life the film has ensues from their interaction–to the retarded car chase which ends Demi being tossed about thirty feet into the air and smashing into a car windshield with no resultant injury.

    Frankly, I watched this at my brother’s house, and as you can imagine paid less attention as it went on, but it’s a measure of how lacking the film was in grabbing my interest that I forgot the extremely stupid action scene Scott mentions, in which Demi goes all action hero to escape death at the hands of the escaped spree killer.

    I also forget the repeated threat from her superior to take Atwater off homicide detective casework and have her ride a desk for a year because of her ongoing divorce proceedings (!!!). Dumb subplot 87.

  • As long as Dane Cook dies a horrible, prolonged, bloody death, I’m OK with it.

  • It’s very odd that you can have a bunch of resources and make a bad movie. Sure, it’s really difficult to make a great movie regardless of what you have, but there’s no excuse for not making at least a “competent” movie. I also agree on your endless subplots issue and add that I hate when they feel the need to connect every single character together in some ridiculous way, though I don’t know if that’s relevant for this film.

  • Andrew

    The discussions with himself sound like they lifted them (sort of) from Minus Man. Not a great film there, either, but at least it stuck to a single plot, and one subplot, rather than what sound like a thousand subplots.

  • Jack Spencer Jr

    This depresses me. Mostly because I had a story idea where a guy was a serial killer and a split personality like this, although the other personality was a cosmonaut, so take that for whatever it’s worth.

    I am beginning to learn a lot about Hollywood and the methods used to find scripts and it’s amazing that good movies ever get made at all.

    Lots of movies that get made got picked up in the first place because of one scene or concept that was judged to be “something no one has seen before.” Alien is a good example, as Walter Hill hated the script but found the chestburster scene original and so bought the script. Hill also directed 48 Hours, which I found to be a middling action movie that did not deserve the esteem it has been held in… except for the scene where Eddie Murphy stares down a bar full of rednecks. That scene was great. Unfortunately, the only reason the rest of the movie exists s to have this scene. A more recent example, which I’ve been recapping for another site, is I Know Who Killed Me. The only reason the script got optioned in the first place was because of the stigmatic twins concept. This was a case an original idea also being a very stupid idea.

    The difference between I Know Who Killed Me and Mr Brooks is that IKWKM contained the same narrative wheel spinning that was found in Jaws 2. There was not enough plot, so the script kept reminding us of various plot points until the *yawn* pulse-pounding climax

    Mr Brooks sounds like it suffers from too much plot, which sounds like an odd criticism. The only movie I had seen that managed to pull off too much plot was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but that movie was meant to be a satire, so plot thread left dangling, reaching illogical conclusions, and everything being tied up way too neatly at the end was their intension.

    You’ve listed, what? four major subplots?

    A serial killer with split personality who talks to his other half. The imagined portion urges the real guy to kill but the real guy wants to quit.

    A serial Killer who is a respected businessman and family man learns his pregnant college dropout daughter is also a killer only not so good at it. And he must decide if he’ll help her or not.

    A police detective going through a messy divorce is bedeviled by an escaped spree killer she had put away

    A serial killer gets sloppy on his latest kill and someone takes pictures of him, but the photographer only wants to help the killer kill someone.

    Each one of these was special enough to be the plot of an entire movie, as can be seen just by reading the brief summaries above. Or at least they could have, and if they’d worked on it, they could have been good. But they were all crammed into the same movie. It’s a case of every scene shouting, so the audience goes deaf. And perhaps more importantly, with so many plots, none of them get the time they need to play out properly. So they fall on coincidence and other convenient plot contrivances to help things wrap up.

    All of this just shows that the problem in Hollywood is that the craft of writing is all but forgotten. Not only do the writers not seem to know what they’re doing, but the money men and studio heads no longer recognize quality work when they see it.

    This puts an interesting spin the writer’s strike as they’re the guys who aren’t pulling their weight, so to speak. But that may be unfair as they are probably talented writers in the guild. It’s just the garbage like I Know Who Killed Me and Mr. Brooks that gets option.

  • Again, I think one thing dragging out the Writer’s Strike is that the actors and directors are probably going on strike this summer, and the studios no doubt feel the more they give the writers, the more the other two guilds will demand.

  • R. Dittmar

    For what’s it’s worth, this movie has also earned my lowest grade as well. It is only the third movie that I’ve actually fallen asleep watching.

  • Nicolletta

    FYI: William Hurt’s character was named Marshall, not Morgan.

  • fish eye no miko

    This is the kind of film where every good thing about it just makes the bad stuff all the more irritating.

    Word. If a movie is just bad, you can either write it off, or turn off the thinky part of your brain and enjoy it as dumb fun (especially if it’s a horror or action film). But if you see a movie that has potential, but then it takes that right turn instead of the left, you find yourself sitting there going, “No! You should have done this, not that! Argh!” So. Frustrating.

  • Nicolleta: Thanks for the correction!

  • Ken, given your feelings about the plotting of Mr. Brooks, I’m sure you’d be thrilled to hear that this could have been the first installment in a trilogy. The writer intended it that way, and Costner, Hurt and Moore were allegedly interested—at least before the film actually opened….

  • Given that, they handled it exactly wrong. First, they obviously would have been better doing it as a cable mini-series, one complete work where all the sub-plots would have been integrated into a single work.

    However, if they were doing it as three films (or intended to), they should have realized that the first priority was to make the first film work. And that would have required them *not* to introduce a bunch of plot baggage that, even if their every dream came true, would have meant audiences would have to wait four to six years to see the end of.