In his most unique role to date, Kevin Costner plays a conflicted serial killer who has to deal with the stresses that
every normal family man has to deal with: how to satisfy a curious voyeur who has evidence proving he is the Thumbprint Killer, how to accept the fact that his daughter may be just as screwed up as he is, how to get a persistent cop off his back, and how to hide it all from his wife.
Mr. Brooks is an interesting and original movie told from the perspective of a serial killer, a man who doesn''t want to kill but is addicted to it nonetheless. He is the perfect killer: smart, successful and invisible. He cleans up his crime scenes and there are never any witnesses... until he forgets to close the drapes one evening and gets caught on camera by comedian-wannabe-actor Dane Cook. The movie progresses from there, with Mr. Brooks working out issues with his daughter (Danielle Panabaker) and wife (Marg Helgenberger) and arguing with his imaginary and evil friend, played by William Hurt. Demi Moore plays the cop, who is also dealing with another serial killer and a bitter divorce.
Mr. Brooks works in that it is really unlike anything we''ve seen before. There have been plenty of serial killer movies over the years, some of them good, some of them not so good, but for the most part, you know what you''re going to get. Mr. Brooks is not a fantastic serial killer movie by any stretch of the imagination, but while the movie does offer some perspective from Moore''s point of view, most of the film is presented through the eyes of Costner, who delicately plays a man who is almost normal but in reality anything but.