by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: January 04, 2010

People all over the world suffer from addictions, and most of these addictions are not only unhealthy for the person who has them, they also adversely affect the people close to them. For Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner), this reality is even worse than for most…he’s tried to quit, he goes to AA meetings and constantly fights with his inner demons to stay away from his addiction. Unfortunately, this particular addiction is something this average Joe can’t seem to kick – he’s addicted to killing.

Mr. Brooks takes off with an account of the resurfacing of the thumbprint killer after three years of inactivity. While Detective Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore) strives to stop this maniac before he strikes again, Earl’s demon (William Hurt) constantly urges him to kill again. To add to this, an alias Mr. Smith (Dane Cook) has added his voice to Earl’s encouragement to murder someone else, a temptation that Earl is ill-equipped (and perhaps ill-inclined) to ignore.

Maybe the reason that Mr. Brooks never really made it big is that thriller and horror fans, on average, probably wouldn’t really gravitate toward Kevin Costner. On the other hand, long-time fans of Kevin Costner tend not to be horror/thriller fans, since Costner generally devotes himself to the kind of nice-guy, all-American roles seen in Field of Dreams and Message in a Bottle. People who watch chick flicks and inspirational movies watch Kevin Costner, not thriller fans.

No doubt anyone who has read the description of this film has wondered at the choice of Costner for the role of Earl Brooks, but surprisingly he was one of the best roles in the entire movie. Everyone expects William Hurt to be creepy and malicious, but Kevin Costner tends to inspire every wholesome image in the book, playing nothing more sinister than your average recovering drunk. Perhaps it is this very reason that makes Costner so perfect for the role, being someone that is so painfully average that you’d expect nothing from him worse than dodging parking tickets, yet he has a side to him that most fans have probably never seen.

All of the characters in this film were fairly secondary to Costner’s and Hurt’s characters, but it seems that they were intentionally sidelined since Costner’s character does, obviously, live almost entirely in his head.

There are a number of intertwining plots throughout this movie, one or two of which weren’t really necessary and perhaps somewhat diluted the overall effect, but for the most part it was well thought out, flowed well, and kept moving. The only pacing issue noted was a section in the middle of the movie where an inordinate amount of time was spent following around a potential victim, giving plenty of time for shots of Costner’s various expressions and Dane Cook’s whining, but adding very little to the story itself.

Overall, despite the pacing issues, I think this film came off very well, especially considering the unlikely cast. I especially enjoyed the story line’s commentary on the effects of addiction in someone’s life, though in this case the addiction was slightly more than the drugs or alcohol so many people struggle with. This is a great film for thriller fans, though it does include nudity and several scenes of graphic violence, so younger viewers or those who don’t like such blatant visuals should definitely stay away.

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