Mr. Brooks

Earl Brooks (Costner) has the lot: thriving business, loving wife (Marg Helgenberger), beautiful daughter, Portland’s ‘Man of the Year’ award...

...and an addiction to murder driven by an inner monster called Marshall (Hurt). Earl is the notorious ‘Thumbprint Killer’ who, after suppressing Marshall's homicidal urges for two years, eventually gives in by blowing away a copulating couple.

Ironically Earl is caught on the job too, snapped through open curtains by the peeping Tom across the way. The deviant ‘Mr Smith’ (Dane Cook) then blackmails Earl into taking him along for the next murder.

The Thumbprint Killer’s return couldn’t come at a worse time for Detective Atwood (Moore). An heiress worth millions, her divorce is reaching new levels of acrimony and The Hangman - another multiple murderer she put away - has just escaped.

That’s not the half of it. Earl’s daughter Jane (Danielle Panabaker) has come home from California after quitting college. She’s clearly hiding something. Marshall thinks she’s hiding something on top of whatever she’s hiding too.

Mr Brooks certainly suffers from overkill - of subplots. Oscar-nominated for Stand By Me, director Evans and co-writer Raynold Gideon have some good ideas but leave themselves far too many loose ends to tie up satisfactorily.

The interesting stuff - what’s a rich girl like Atwood doing in a job like this; is Earl’s condition hereditary? - remains underdeveloped while precious time is wasted on the Hangman (an unsophisticated thug who wouldn’t give the Keystone Cops a run for their money) and numerous cuts to Demi doing lengths in the pool.

Despite painting Earl in a darker shade of his usual screen magnolia, Costner won’t give many viewers sleepless nights, though Hurt’s malevolent Jiminy Cricket is good value whenever he’s around.

But given Mr Brooks’ wish to reform and his apparent ability to make Marshall disappear at will (for up to two years), it makes you wonder why he’s around at all.

It’s all a question of convenience. Like Earl’s spurious interest in pottery and sudden mastery of disguise… and cops who only tail subjects during daylight hours.

Indeed, several story threads are resolved so abruptly that they all make the front page of the same day’s newspaper.

A meticulous killer with family issues; a cop with problems of her own; secondary murderers on the loose; a plot with unexplored depths - this could have been a decent TV series.

Pity Showtime's Dexter beat them to it.

Elliott Noble