Constant Viewer: Mr. Brooks

Constant Viewer can only speculate how many reviewers of a certain age will somehow work in the phrase Our Mr. Brooks in their write-ups of this psychological thriller. There, that's out of the way. Kevin Costner takes the title role as a tormented but meticulous serial killer, a man who is literally addicted to murder and whose addiction is personified by his alter-ego, Marshall, played with obvious enjoyment by William Hurt.

Mr. Brooks is the sort of film in which the Costner / Hurt psychopath role is in many ways the most believable character in the story. Demi Moore plays multi-millionairess Detective Tracy Atwood whose bad luck with husbands but great track record with serial killers should have been sufficient to pluck her from Oregon to head her own FBI department by now. Meanwhile, comedian Dane Cook plays a voyeur - blackmailer - wannabe killer with, to put it mildly, very little aptitude for the finer points of such callings. By comparison, rich box manufacturer Earl Brooks, whose hobbies include pottery and multiple homicides seems far more plausible.

Okay, so Earl seeks help to try to kick the less socially acceptable habit (no, not the pottery) by attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings without, um, sharing the particular nature of his admitted "addiction." Apparently, there is no specific 12 Step program for serial killers yet, so poor Earl simply has to make do. Then there's the problem of and with his daughter, an entirely unsympathetic, callow and clueless character who, having dropped out of some unspecified but elite university in Palo Alto (CV wonders which school it could be?), serves primarily to complicate Brook's already overly complicated situation.

Mr. Brooks is directed by Bruce A. Evans and played by its cast with a sort of cool detachment and up too a point it works reasonably well as a genre suspense film. At least the viewer is kept guessing how things will all turn out. The almost insurmountable problem nonetheless is that Costner's character is, by default, the hero of the film or at least its most sympathetic character. After all, he really wants to stop barging in on naked couples and shooting them. If only murder wasn't such a rush and so, well, so doggone intoxicating. Will audiences buy any of this? CV rather doubts it. Still, for the movie fan whose tastes run to the offbeat if not quite avant-garde, Mr. Brooks might be just the between-blockbusters summer movie to see.