Opening

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—— The Hangover Part III May 23
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Mr. Brooks (2007)

tomatometer

55

Average Rating: 5.7/10
Reviews Counted: 153
Fresh: 84 | Rotten: 69

The setup is intriguing, but Mr. Brooks overstuffs itself with twists and subplots, becoming more preposterous as it goes along.

43

Average Rating: 5.2/10
Critic Reviews: 40
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 23

The setup is intriguing, but Mr. Brooks overstuffs itself with twists and subplots, becoming more preposterous as it goes along.

audience

75

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 576,289

My Rating

Movie Info

A hardened detective enters into a tenuous symbiotic relationship with the vicious serial killer she is tracking after earning the respect of the murderous madman in this vicious psychological thriller starring Demi Moore, Kevin Costner, and William Hurt. Earl Brooks (Costner) is a successful businessman, noted philanthropist, and loving father. He's the kind of man whom no one would ever suspect of being a notorious serial killer, but then again history's most dubious psychopaths are often the

Oct 23, 2007

$28.4M

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All Critics (157) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (88) | Rotten (71) | DVD (24)

This wannabe highbrow horror-thriller is a graceless, unfocused piece of work with a central narrative as tonally schizophrenic and wayward as its lead.

June 23, 2007 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Mr. Brooks spins a web that will wrap you up in nightmares.

June 15, 2007
Rolling Stone
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The movie is so well made, and so compelling as a portrait of a man at war with himself, that, right up until the end, many people will probably be entertained by its intricately preposterous story.

June 4, 2007 Full Review Source: New Yorker
New Yorker
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[Director] Evans keeps flirting with a potentially rich idea only to surround it with indigestible amounts of silliness.

June 2, 2007 Full Review Source: Time Out New York
Time Out New York
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Quite a few plot lines and character quandaries remain unresolved. And yet the movie makes sense as it stands. After all, one can never know what makes a psychopath tick.

June 1, 2007 Full Review Source: Toronto Star | Comment (1)
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Certainly more genuinely creepy than many recent thrillers, and the supporting cast is effective.

June 1, 2007 Full Review Source: Seattle Times
Seattle Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Costner's delusional serial killer isn't for kids.

July 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media

A dinâmica entre Hurt e Costner carrega Instinto Secreto: exibindo uma imensa química em suas cenas, os dois atores estabelecem um sentimento misto de tensão e camaradagem entre seus personagens.

January 16, 2008 Full Review Source: Cinema em Cena
Cinema em Cena

It's oddly entertaining, as long as you lower your threshold of disbelief...

November 30, 2007 Full Review Source: MSN.com
MSN.com

The audience is apt to forget its own vicarious indulgence in some fairly perverse, psychologically unhinged acted out fantasy, as Kevin Costner masterminds erotically tinged guilty pleasures.

October 27, 2007 Full Review Source: International News Service
International News Service

The audience is apt to forget its own vicarious indulgence in some fairly perverse, psychologically unhinged acted out fantasy, as Kevin Costner masterminds erotically tinged guilty pleasures.

October 27, 2007 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze
NewsBlaze

Costner gives a nicely underplayed performance and the film is well enough made to be watchable, if only to find out what enormity will be perpetrated next, and by whom.

October 12, 2007 Full Review Source: This is London | Comments (3)
This is London

Costner's double-act with Hurt is a wicked pleasure, like The Odd Couple with a psychopathic twist.

October 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Independent

Kevin Costner as a schizophrenic serial killer? Demi Moore as a hardboiled police detective? No, we don't think so.

October 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Financial Times
Financial Times

It does keep you guessing until the end, but Mr Brooks turns out to be Mr Average after all.

October 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Sun Online
Sun Online

There's enough ambition for a miniseries here, and satellite viewers already have the rather terrific Dexter. Stuffed into two hours, it's all a bit of a pile-up.

October 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph
Daily Telegraph

Audience Reviews for Mr. Brooks

Successful business and family man Earl Brooks is secretly a serial killer whose meticulous planning is unravelled when a witness photographs him at the scene of his latest murder. My first reaction to the synopsis of this film was "Just what the world needs. Another serial killer movie..." but I have to say that the novel approach of this film had me hooked from the start. Costner plays Brooks not as a gleeful killer, but a victim of an unwanted addiction which is personified on screen by William Hurt; a kind of Tyler Durden for psychopaths. It sounds gimmicky but the great performances really make it work and Hurt and Costner have really good on screen chemistry, as the killer argues and jokes with "himself". Far less interesting, unsurprisingly, is Demi Moore and it is difficult to care about her domestic troubles although she is nowhere near as vile as usual. The biggest weakness of the film is its seeming lack of confidence in its own premise; it almost seems to feel the need to throw in a load of other plot threads that only serve to make the film less believable and more unlikely; Moore's shoot out in particular looked like it was crowbarred in from another, inferior film. I felt that if the subplots had been stripped away this could have been an excellent film, but as it is it felt like a breath of fresh air in an overcrowded genre and is well worth watching for the Costner and Hurt double act alone.
May 29, 2007
garyX
xGary Xx

Super Reviewer

With its 80s resurrection cast (plus Dane Cook) and a plot and a visual style more suited to primetime TV, I think a lot of viewers and critics had their knives sharpened long before bothering to watch this film - I know my expectations were low. But what we have here is a movie that goes to some dark places, and a decent performance by Kevin Costner as a compulsive killer, and a consummate professional who hides it from his family and his colleagues incredibly. The Cook character is interesting, too: a hobbyist photographer who takes surreptitious photos of a couple having sex in an adjacent apartment building, he unwittingly captures Costner killing them, and in an attempt to blackmail him he ends up enticed by the crimes and grows interested in taking part. I could take or leave Demi Moore as the cop, and I didn't think her backstory (failed marriage, ex trying to get more than a fair share in the settlement) was very necessary as a subplot, and William Hurt was capable but little else as the personification of the voice in Costner's head, invisible to everyone else and urging him to keep killing. I'd have probably liked it less if my expectations were higher, but it's no better or worse than most mediocre Hollywood divertissement; give it a chance, skeptics, you just might enjoy it.
November 24, 2007
danperry17

Super Reviewer

    1. Earl Brooks: The contents of your safety deposit box, Mr. Smith... have vanished!
    – Submitted by Jane W (7 months ago)
    1. Hawkins: I wouldn't take the bullet but I would push you out of the way.
    – Submitted by Evan H (10 months ago)
    1. Marshall: Why do you fight it so hard, Earl?
    – Submitted by Ahmed I (13 months ago)

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