Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

The good news: there are many twists, turns, subplots and surprises that the coming attractions don't even hint at. The bad news: these twists and turns are so preposterous, or so irrelevant, that they undermine the movie they're meant to tart up.

| Apr 7, 2008

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2007

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

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2007

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

| Oct 12, 2007

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.

| Oct 12, 2007

If you can stomach the psychological codswallop of a serial killer keeping the demons at bay via Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, it may well be possible to enjoy this taut-ish thriller.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2007

There's plenty to recommend this old-fashioned serial-killer flick.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2007

Despite numerous cutesy twists, it's the gradual unveiling of a warped morality that lures you into Brooks' world.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2007

Although flawed, this remains a blackly funny noir treat thanks to Costner and Hurt's double-act.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2007

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

| Original Score: 2/6 | Jun 23, 2007

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2007

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.

| Jun 4, 2007

[Director] Evans keeps flirting with a potentially rich idea only to surround it with indigestible amounts of silliness.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Jun 2, 2007

Mr. Brooks had the potential to be a ridiculous thrill ride, but that requires a director who knows how to shoot a scene with more style than a Law & Order episode.

Full Review | Jun 1, 2007

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.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007

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

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007

Please don't tell me it was supposed to be played for laughs all along, because I don't buy it. Too late to save it from doom, the twists and snafus in Mr. Brooks start coming too fast for the audience to absorb, and the movie turns delusional.

| Jun 1, 2007

In Mr. Brooks, Bruce A. Evans' fitfully subversive approach to the genre, we get a few fresh takes on the psychology of serial killing.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 1, 2007