Review of MR. BROOKS

MR. BROOKS - STORY: A man trying to overcome his secret urges to murder people, is confronted with a series of circumstances where he must murder several people in order to set things right for himself and his daughter.

MR. BROOKS - MESSAGE: Self preservation and preservation of the family is more valuable than the lives of strangers. Careful planning and skilled competence win the day. The comfortable, stable middle class world not only cannot begin to deal with the vast power of our innermost drives, but it also cannot detect them, and even serves as a way to hide them from public view. Do we really know our neighbors?

MR. BROOKS - WIN: I liked having a separate character he talked to representing a portion of his mind as this is, given artistic license, the way compartmented parts of our mind do operated. Also accurate is the ;ensive look of the fellow because this is very introverting stuff. I liked the fact that the reason for his killing urges wasn't explained with some silly reference to childhood abuse. The fact that he wanted to overcome these urges says that they are not coming from him, that he is separate from these urges, which, as man is spiritual in nature, is true. Also, if our deep spitirual core were left to its devices, it would wish to do the right thing, to overcome the killing urges. So you have the spiritual nature of man fighting against an additive that is not him. Very well done. By making a phone call at the end, he opened himself up to potentially being caught, which is natually what a spiritual being would do, if they couldn't stop themself from doing bad things.

MR. BROOKS - LOSE: In a way, the movie presupposes that the daughter would be inclined to kill because the father is, which isn't necessarily the case. (If that were true then kill all the progeny of killers and murder would never happen again on the planet.) And, it is unlikely that the daughter would have acquired any mental hypnotic orders to kill during an illness, or when she was with him and shocked by his actions, or during a moment of unconsciousness when her mind was open to suggestion. These are unlikely because he seemed to keep his killing life totally separate from his family life, meaning he would never take her with him, nor talk about it to her. It promotes killing as a solution to problems.

MR. BROOKS - EFFECT ON ME: I wanted to see the sequel. Did the daughter really do the murder at school? The cop is sharp, will she figure this out? I'd like to see the sequel be her story as she does figure it out. What nefarious deeds does the wife have going on that she doesn't see any clues her husband shows? Will he be able to stop killing? That would be another sequel I'd like to see whereby he finds a way to be able to stop killing. And, what did he mean that he's done other murders besides just the "fingerprint killings"? Who is this guy?

Sincerely,
Becky Mate
Script Consultant
www.virtueinthearts.com