Mr. Brooks (2007)

	Directed by: Bruce A. Evans	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama/Thriller NORWEGIAN TITLE Mr. Brooks RUNNING TIME 120 minutes
	Produced by: Kevin Costner Raynold Gideon Jim Wilson
	Written by: Bruce A. Evans Raynold Gideon

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Mr. Earl Brooks	Kevin Costner	½
Detective Tracy Atwood	Demi Moore
Mr. Smith	Dane Cook
Marshall	William Hurt	½
Emma Brooks	Marg Helgenberger
Hawkins	Ruben Santiago-Hudson	½
Jane Brooks	Danielle Panabaker

Review

Mr. Brooks proceeds as a happy-go-lucky film full of energy, with ostensibly random explanations and conceptual systems. It's like a campy, runaway TV series or B-movie that just happens to be populated with a marvellous set of characters and handled with singular confidence by a director who one really shouldn't expect such confidence from. That being said, there were similar elements in Bruce A. Evans' only other film as a director, Kuffs (1992): viewer-friendly off-hand qualities that both make the film hard to resist as well as give it an immediate freshness often lacking from films in this and other genres after years of recycling ideas.

Kevin Costner is the brilliant murder-addict Mr. Earl Brooks. He is a loving husband and father, not a psychopath by any measure, but he always has his imaginary friend/alter-ego Marshall (William Hurt) with him. Earl is the rational, balanced one; Marshall is his primal, emotive counterpart – it is he who embodies the lust and the bloodthirst, but it is also he who exhibits all the joie de vivre: a resonant comment about Western civilization's constrained suburban living. Along the way Mr. Brooks must deal with a caring wife, a volatile daughter, a no-nonsense detective on his trail, and a peculiar hobby photographer who suddenly seems to have the upper hand on him.

The brilliance of Mr. Brooks isn't in psychological accuracy or groundbreaking thematics, but rather in its fresh tone and rhythm. It always seems to be one step ahead – probably because it is stepping in so many different directions at once. The film combines the conventional and the trite with the thoroughly unpredictable in delicate fashion. The biggest of many treats is the interaction between Earl and Marshall – one of the most beautiful and original movie friendships in a while. It's a clever move by Evans to portray their relationship as if it were the most natural in the world – without explanations or questioning, because that is arguably the way someone who has been living with a guy like this inside his head for an entire lifetime will perceive it. Their complementary and completely dependent relationship has a romantic quality to it as well. It's great to see Kevin Costner as loose and comfortable as he is here. And William Hurt is an absolute delight as Marshall – the guy we all would want to be every once in a while.