Mr. Brooks is a successful small businessman who started and grew his own box factory to the point where he has just won a local man of the year award. He has a lovely wife and a daughter in college. He seems to have it all, but he has one problem. He's an addict. And he's not the kind of addict who needs pills or alcohol or gambling to satisfy his craving. Instead, Mr. Brooks is addicted to murder.
He killed total strangers at various intervals for years. And he always carefully planned each crime. But he gets no satisfaction from killing, he's simply driven to do it by his addiction. It's been two years since his last killing, and he's tried to keep the addiction at bay by going to AA. He merely tells the group "I'm an addict". You'd think that eventually the group at AA would press him for more details than that, but I digress.
William Hurt is Brooks's alter ego. And it works because Hurt is not just playing the part of Brooks that wants to kill, like some maniac. Instead, this guy is also somebody who talks to Brooks, as much as you can talk to yourself. He sympathizes and gives Brooks a hug when he breaks down over a huge family dilemma he's facing at one point.
The problem is that, after two years, Brooks gives in to his addiction and kills again. But this time he makes a mistake. He doesn't notice that the curtains are open when he commits the double homicide in the victims' loft apartment. Complications ensue.
Demi Moore plays a dogged homicide detective who is after this serial killer, and at first I wondered why there were so many details of her life in her thread of the plot - her inherited wealth, the gold-digging husband who is trying to drain her dry in the divorce setllement, the prison escapee who wants her dead. But then the whole thing comes together at the end magnificently.
I'd say this rates right up there as one of my favorite Costner films. He is terrific as a guy who looks and acts so incredibly predictable and reliable in his daily life. Nobody would ever suspect. He even protests his daughter's announcement that she wants to terminate her unplanned pregnancy. Also kudos to Dane Cook as Mr. Smith, a role that proves that it may take brains to be a mechanical engineer, but that doesn't necessarily mean it requires common sense.
