You know, Adrian managed to pick an absolute blinder, tonight, by coming over with a copy of the Kevin Costner flick, “Mr Brooks”.
Which is one heck of an entertaining little psychological thriller!
Yes, I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking “Kevin Costner? Thriller? Wha … ?”.
Or something like it, I’m betting. After all, this is the same leading man that gave us “Waterworld” and “Robin Hood: Prince of Thives”. Entertaining, maybe, but not exactly what one could call blood-soaked.
Costner plays Earl Brooks; a successful businessman from Portland in Oregon who’s got serious addiction issues. The main one being that he has a serious addiction to killing people.
You know, even as I write that, I realise just how odd that sounds …
And at the start of the film, the eponymous Mr B has managed to avoid a relapse by going to AA meetings — although not being as thoroughly honest as we’re encouraged to be — and relapses at the start of the film, aided and abetted by his alter-ego, Marshall*. Played with a certain amount of gusto by William Hurt.
Where it gets interested isn’t so much the threat of being caught by Demi Moore’s police detective. (Nicely played, there, I should add; although I’m not sure that her character’s motivations for staying in the police are entirely convincing. Good ol’ noblesse oblige, and all that. But a messy divorce, in this case, does make for a good running theme and plot device. And her husband is a bit of a twit!)
Where it gets interesting is, after the murder Earl commits at the start of the film, he finds he’s been photographed.
By a fan.
Who doesn’t want to hand him in to the police.
Oh, no.
Mr Smith — the deeply grey villain of the piece — wants to be a killer, himself …
You know, that’s possibly saying a lot. After all, how many of us have watched something like of “Silence of the Lambs” and been quietly rooting for Hannibal Lecter?
Well, we have, haven’t we?
There’s something sort of attractive about the bad guy, isn’t there?
To the point, with “Mr Brooks”, where Adrian and I were both watching various scenes, and thinking “Neat! I wonder if that’d work in real life … ?”
Which is why I think this is a film worth watching. It’s a nicely safe way of getting our demons out in the open. Without actually hurting anyone …
And I’ll have to have a quiet word with Sean, an ol’ American friend.
Portland OR, WAS his hometown, after all.
* Who’s invisible to the rest of the film’s characters. And alternates between being the demon on Earl’s shoulder, egging him on, and the warning angel telling him something’s a possibly bad move. There’s possibly a lot of speculation about the old Greek idea of dæmons, there …
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