[lit-ideas] Mr. Brooks
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:02:15 -0800
This film was much better than Le Samourai stylistically. Mr. Brooks
(albeit a serial killer) like Jef Costello has abilities beyond the normal.
In Jef's case, the director Melville attempted to describe them with a
clumsy camera trick. In Mr. Brooks (Kevin Costner) case we learn that he
hears a voice, a voice urging him to kill again and again. This voice is
personified as Marshall, the suave and sophisticated William Hurt whose
urgings seem intellectual rather than psychotic. Brooks and Mrshall
converse throughout the movie. Brooks will speak out loud to Marshall with
his wife (Marg Helgenberger) sitting next to him, but she won't hear the
conversation. I would be surprised doubt that anyone would object to that.
William Hurt is superb as Costner's voice. Also, the director is clever
showing Hurt and Costner moving in unison from time to time.
This is a very good, well acted movie, but I felt a bit guilty for liking
Mr. Brooks. After all, he is a serial killer. He is the personable,
charming, Kevin Costner with one minor flaw which Mr. Brooks terms his
addiction. He kills people. But he's not a low-class serial killer. He
doesn't do anything sexual or perverted to his victims although his victims
are shown as doing sexual things to each other and Mr. Brooks as being a
major coitus interruptus.
In the first killing we are shown, Brooks and Marshall have been arguing.
Brooks has been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: "Hi, my name is
Earl and I'm an addict," and those meetings have enabled him to avoid
killing anyone for two years, but now he has slipped and is in the house of
a couple he spotted at a dance studio. He starts to turn and go back out of
the house, but Marshall stops him: "Don't you want to see what they're
doing?" And then it shows Brooks and Marshall looking for about three
seconds before walking into the room where Brooks kills the couple by firing
a silenced 22 caliber bullet into each forehead.
Brooks is devoted to his wife, Emma, and his daughter, Jane (played by
Danielle Panabaker). Jane returns home from college because, she tells her
father, she wants to get into the business (Brooks built up a box-making
business and has recently been voted businessman of the year), but Marshall
tells Brooks that Jane is hiding something. "I know it," says Brooks.
Later Brooks hears Emma and Jane arguing. He goes down to find that Jane is
pregnant. But Marshall tells Brooks it is more than that. She is still
hiding something. And then later when Brooks is having his own problems
with a serial-killer wanabe. The police, a bunch of them, come out to
Brooks' house to question Jane. It seems that a fellow classmate was
murdered, someone Jane said she hardly knew. But Marshall tells Brooks, she
did it. Brooks watches his daughter's expressions while she is speaking and
he knows she really did do it. Later when he and Marshall are alone he
debates what to do. Marshall wants him to let Jane go to jail so they can
keep on killing uninterruptedly, but Brooks won't do that. He loves his
daughter and has always protected her. He has a stash of false IDs and
disguises in his "lab" (the lab where he develops his new box designs) and
in disguise goes back to the college town and kills someone with the same
M.O. as that used by Jane. And since Jane will have a perfect alibi, the
police must switch their attention to a possible serial killer.
The detective hunting him is Tracy Atwood played by Demi Moore. She is not
the clumsy French superintendant played by Francois Perier who follows
ineptly in the pattern of Porfiry Petrovich who pursued Raskolnikov in Crime
and Punishment. Tracy Atwood is being pursued by another serial killer and
harassed by an ex-husband who wants an exorbitant divorce settlement.
Tracy Atwood is consistent with the sort of detective you see in typical
detective shows today, and she does a good job. She is every whit as good
as they are. If she were the whole move then it would be something we could
call typical rather than unusual, but she isn't. Mr. Brooks is the movie.
He has been dubbed the Thumb-print killer because he puts the thumbprints of
his victims on a bedroom lamp using their own blood. But he never leaves a
clue and no one ever sees him except for the one time when someone takes a
photo of him. But that photographer doesn't want to shake Mr. Brooks down.
He wants to be just like him; which later opens up the possibility of the
Thumb-Print Killer's disappearance - not as Marshall feared, not as giving
it all up, but disappearing by placing all the blame on the wannabe,
killing him, and then quitting (Brooks says) but we know he can't, and we
also know that he's killed people in other ways; so he will use a different
M.O.; which won't be a problem for him.
But is he psychologically possible? He isn't violent in any of his
relationships. On one occasion he starts to speak harshly to his daughter
but quickly apologizes. His daughter and wife look at him in surprise when
he does this. It is apparently out of character for him to speak that way.
He is a gentle and caring husband and father and has an exemplary business
career. He has been voted man of the year. No one other than Mr. Smith
knows anything bad about his "addiction."
We read news reports about the neighbors of killers who later report that
the killer seemed like a nice guy, but these neighbors are not life-long
friends. In the case where someone has lived a normal life for 20 or 30
years after a killing, the killing was a one-time event, not a regular
pattern.
And in the case where there is a regular pattern, after the serial killer is
caught, there are signs of his aberration in his childhood. The only hint
of this we have in the case of Mr. Brooks is as he is rolling the body of
Mr. Smith, the wannabe serial killer, into a grave, he tells him that he has
killed a lot of people before he was the Thumb Print killer. But presumably
he was as clever in those killings as he is in the ones we have learned
about. So maybe he is plausible and has merely been fortunate enough to
get away with all his crimes.
I mentioned feeling guilty about liking Mr. Brooks, but he is made likable.
He isn't a monster. He is a likable guy with an addiction. Alcoholics
Anonymous' alcoholics and drug addicts are well known in our society. We
don't condemn such people. We sympathize with them and wish them well. We
hope they will overcome their addictions. And in this movie, that is what
we are encouraged to do - or are we? Mr. Brooks is no drunken sot who
imposes on us. He is a clever intelligent fellow who presents CSI experts
with nothing to work with. Furthermore the only people we see him kill have
flaws. Maybe they don't deserve killing, but we don't like them, and maybe
that is a criteria Mr. Brooks uses - to kill people most of us wouldn't
like.
There has been an ongoing discussion of whether Hollywood's violence
influences impressionable movie-watchers to emulate that violence. Could
that happen in this case, the case of a serial killer who is presented as an
attractive figure we can sympathize with?
Mr. Brooks has a nightmare in the closing scenes, but not about any of the
murders he has committed - about his daughter killing him because she wants
to take over the box-factory. The movie ends with his saying the prayer
they taught him at Alcoholics Anonymous including praying for the strength
to accept the things he cannot change.
Lawrence
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