Caddyshack (1980) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Harold Ramis

Starring:  Michael O' Keefe, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Cindy Morgan, Brian Doyle-Murray, Scott Colomby, Sarah Holcomb, Dan Resin

Caddyshack is a funny movie in search of direction.  It has a threadbare plot and some of the characters and subplots seem dropped in from another movie.  There is plenty of comic talent on both sides of the camera, with Michael O'Keefe as a stabilizing force as our hero, caddy Danny Noonan, who wants a scholarship and sucks up to the snobs who frequent the country club where he works.

Danny is more or less a straight man and a witness to the lunacy taking place at the club.  Some of the nuts he encounters are head groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Murray), who obsesses over getting rid of the gophers who live under the course, sardonic golf pro Ty Webb (Chase), the apoplectic villain Judge Smails (Knight), and uncouth land developer Al Czervik (Dangerfield), who would love to buy the club and level it to make way for condos.  

We have various forms of humor, some of it successful, competing for the same screen.  There's gross-out humor, one-liners (courtesy of the energetic Dangerfield), dry wit, and then Murray's performance which is mostly improvised and is the weakest part of the movie.  Most of Murray's duties involve long, dragging monologues as he tries to eradicate the varmints from the course.  Caddyshack is frustrating because while it has a few brilliant comic moments, it plays like a series of unrelated comic vignettes instead of a full movie.  

Flight Risk (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Mel Gibson

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace

Flight Risk is Mel Gibson's first directorial effort since the excellent Hacksaw Ridge (2016).  Flight Risk is material that doesn't need someone of Gibson's talents to direct it.  It's not a terrible film, but it isn't memorable either.  Its star is Mark Wahlberg, but he spends the bulk of the movie in the back of the plane either tied up, knocked out, or beat up.  It's a shame, because he plays a terrific psycho when he is awake.  

The plot is simple.  The majority of the movie's 90-minute running time takes place aboard a beat-up plane flying a government witness named Winston (Grace) to Anchorage so he could testify against a mob boss in federal court.  U.S. Marshal Madolyn Harris (Dockery), seeking redemption after screwing up a similar assignment years ago, is in charge of the transfer.  The pilot is the talkative, affable Darryl Booth (Wahlberg), who we learn quickly is really an assassin hired by the mob boss.  Darryl (not his real name, but we will use for the purpose of writing this review) reveals his true colors while flying over the Alaskan wilderness.  

His plan was to kill Harris and Winston and...I assume dump their bodies or ditch the plane and parachute out?   I don't think this was well thought out.  Why not just kill them as soon as he boards and don't bother taking off?  I don't know.  Darryl needlessly complicated matters and also suffers a beating at the hands of Harris and Winston.  Once Darryl is incapacitated, Harris (who can't fly a plane), is talked through the flying process by a local air traffic controller who sounds like Apu from The Simpsons.

Dockery is a bit stiff and Topher Grace plays the weaselly Topher Grace role, while Wahlberg tries to have fun with the slightness that is Flight Risk.  Mel Gibson is a long way from Braveheart and Hacksaw Ridge.  

Carry-On (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Jaime Collet-Serra

Starring:  Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Jason Bateman, Danielle Deadwyler, Logan Mitchell-Green, Dean Norris

Carry-On is an action movie which takes place on Christmas Eve, just like Die Hard, although that's where the similarities end.  For a while, Carry-On carries on (no pun intended) in the Die Hard tradition of silly action sequences and chases.  However, the plot bogs down in logistical questions in which we wonder why the villain made this all so hard on himself.  I'm aware Carry-On isn't made to be dissected or fully logical, but the more complications arise, the more I wonder how a smart guy like Jason Bateman's Traveler could've allowed for his plan to spin so far out of control. 

The plot is simple.  Ethan (Egerton), a TSA agent coasting along in his current job without much interest or future, is working the screening machines at the mobbed LAX on Christmas Eve.  He soon finds an earpiece with a note to place it in his ear.  The anonymous baddie on the other end tells Ethan that at a certain point, he needs to let through a passenger with something deadly in his carry-on suitcase.  If Ethan doesn't comply, the Traveler (as he's listed in the credits) will have his girlfriend Nora (Carson), who also works at LAX, killed.  For a while, this generates suspense, especially with Bateman providing menacing sarcasm similar to Kiefer Sutherland in Phone Booth (2002).  

But after Ethan allows the carry-on suitcase through (containing a bomb of Russian nerve gas), Ethan then attempts to stop the bomb and the Traveler from detonating it.  Through some bizarre plot point, The Traveler explains to Ethan how to dismantle the bomb before it blows up the airport.  This is the first of many head scratchers the Traveler commits.  What he should have done was use Ethan to get the bomb smuggled through, then prick him with some poison that will simulate a fatal heart attack (like he did with another LAX guard), the bomb could get on the plane, and no one would be any the wiser.

An LAPD detective (Deadwyler) is also on the case and needs to track down Ethan and the Traveler while piecing together what is happening.  And yes, there are some Christmas songs sprinkled throughout the soundtrack, to keep us in a jolly mood.  The actors sell the material better than it deserves.  But then the proceedings grow needlessly complicated and confusing.  The Traveler is supposed to be an expert "facilitator" who is paid a handsome sum to make plots like this run smoothly.  I'd say he's overpaid, and someone else could do it more cheaply and a lot less suspiciously.  

 

Street Smart (1987) * * *

Directed by:  Jerry Schatzberg

Starring:  Christopher Reeve, Morgan Freeman, Kathy Baker, Mimi Rogers, Andre Gregory

Jonathan Fisher (Reeve) is a desperate journalist for the New Yorker looking to save his job after each of his article ideas is rejected by his editor.  He then befriends a local hooker named Punchy (Baker), who doesn't want to give up information about her pimp, but she tells enough for Jonathan to create a phony article on a pimp named Tyrone.  The article is a success, he is now the toast of the town, and soon Jonathan finds himself on television covering investigative pieces.  All is great, until Punchy's pimp Fast Black (Freeman) is arraigned for murder and his lawyer notices the subject of Jonathan's article sounds an awful lot like his client. 

Jonathan is now caught in a lie, and this has legal ramifications for him should his secret come out.  His editor stands by him, but the court wants his notes, which Jonathan doesn't have of course, and the web of deceit grows larger.   Fast Black, who is as smart as he is ruthless, decides to use Jonathan's deception to his advantage.   He agrees to become Jonathan's interview subject legitimately, if Jonathan makes up notes and provides Fast Black with an alibi for his murder charge.  

Street Smart was Morgan Freeman's breakthrough role and his first Oscar-nominated role.  He can be charming and friendly, but then turn into a murderous monster without any notice.  Ask Punchy, who in a critical scene is reduced to a crying mess by the sheer force of Fast Black's personality.  Christopher Reeve's Jonathan rightly can't hold a candle to Fast Black.  He is out of his league and is being crushed by his own lie.  He's hardly a moral center, but we somewhat want him to get away with it because the other people in his life, except for his girlfriend (Rogers), don't seem to have much in the way of a moral compass either.  

Street Smart doesn't necessarily end convincingly.  Jonathan turns into a hero when he shouldn't, and do we really think he could stay on television after all of the public legal wrangling he was involved in.  

Stop-Loss (2008) * * *

Directed by:  Kimberly Peirce

Starring:  Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Abbie Cornish, Timothy Olyphant, Ciaran Hinds, Mamie Gummer

Stop-Loss begins in the middle of the endless Iraq War in which the soldiers, in between battles which could snuff out their lives, are counting down until their tour of duty ends and they leave the army.  The soldiers in Stop-Loss are led by Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Phillippe), who return home to a heroes' parade, party, get drunk, in some cases get into fights, but by the end of the weekend will have been discharged from the army.

It doesn't work out that way for Sgt. King, who just as he's finished filling out the discharge papers is stop-lossed, or has his service time extended because he is ordered to return to Iraq for another tour.  Sgt. King, who like many members of his unit is showing signs of PTSD, panics and flees the base.  He is soon AWOL and on the run with his best friend Steve's (Tatum) fiancee Michelle (Cornish) driving him to Washington where he hopes a local senator can help him.  Michelle sympathizes with Brandon and has seen and experienced Steve's PTSD firsthand when he struck her in a drunken rage.  Brandon experiences flashbacks and hallucinations.  He knows going back to Iraq would destroy him mentally if he manages to survive.

It is suggested to Brandon that he can take part in a lawsuit which might assist in reversing his stop-loss status, or he can contact a lawyer in New York who can send him off to Canada under a new identity.  Is Brandon willing to leave behind his friends and family forever because of his principles?  Stop-Loss doesn't end in a courtroom drama.  Instead, it concentrates on the military experience which disposes of its heroes soon after the parade ends.  Brandon and his friends are left to battle PTSD on their own.  Some are able to cope, others are not.   Phillippe makes a sympathetic hero and we care about him, even though we know where it all will end.  All of the performances work.  The movie doesn't settle for a happy ending.  How Brandon is able to avoid prison time is not explained, but Stop-Loss makes us feel sorry for a loyal soldier who fought for his country, but had the rug pulled out from under him right as tasted his own version of freedom.  

The Parallax View (1974) * *

Directed by:  Alan J. Pakula

Starring:  Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Paula Prentiss, Earl Hindman, William Daniels, Walter McGinn

The Parallax View opens with an assassination atop the Space Needle in Seattle in which a panel determines was committed by a lone assassin.  This isn't the case, of course, and small-town reporter Joe Frady (Beatty), doesn't buy the official version.  He begins his search for clues, witnesses, and other players who can fill in the blanks.  Frady soon convinces his editor (Cronyn) that a corporation called Parallax trains and finances assassins.  Why?  To expediently get rid of its political enemies.  

The movie works best when it closes in on Joe and begins to feel like a nightmare.  Joe steps into a world of being recruited as an assassin, but Beatty isn't entirely convincing as the plot inexorably moves forward to its inevitable conclusion.   He doesn't behave like someone who wants to be a paid hitman.  If Parallax were worth its salt, they would've spotted him as a pretender right away.  It's as if the movie didn't want Beatty's character to get his hands dirty.  The movie is a triumph of atmosphere over plot, for only a little while. 

The ending is a drawn-out mess in which a shooting takes place in a large warehouse where apparently there is no security detail and the place is a logistical nightmare for such.  Joe is, of course, framed as the murderer and the panel featured in the beginning also concludes Joe was the shooter and acted alone.  This has also been determined in future movies by future such panels or the media.  Then, we get another reporter like Frady who sticks his nose in and the cycle repeats itself.  

Rules of Engagement (2000) * * *

Directed by:  William Friedkin

Starring:  Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Anne Archer, Bruce Greenwood

Rules of Engagement stars Samuel L. Jackson as the intense Marine Col. Terry Childers, who is tasked with evacuating the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen (Kingsley) when local protestors begin to grow loud and possibly violent outside the embassy.  Childers helps the grateful ambassador and his family to escape, but then the protestors and snipers seemingly fire on Childers' unit and he responds by ordering his team to shoot into the ground.  83 people in the crowd are killed and hundreds of others wounded.  The worldwide headlines say it's a massacre, and Childers is court-martialed for murder.

Childers calls on his longtime friend and former Vietnam cohort Col. Hays Hodges (Jones), whose life Childers saved in Vietnam, to defend him at the trial.  Hodges feels he is outclassed by the government's prosecuting attorney Major Mark Biggs (Pearce-speaking in an intense, inexplicable Noo Yawk accent), who is sharp and focused, but much younger than Hodges.  The courtroom scenes are done well and fall into familiar but suspenseful enough rhythms.   The wild card is National Security Adviser Bill Sokal (Greenwood), who foolishly destroys the embassy security tape which could exonerate Childers.  Why he does this and why he is against viewing the tape is not adequately explained or even comprehensible.  How could he rise to the level of National Security Adviser by making such dumb decisions?

That doesn't sink the movie, however, because it has a tried-and-true formula which it sticks to successfully.  It's not as polished or memorable as A Few Good Men or The Caine Mutiny, but it does the job. 

Poltergeist (1982) * * *

Directed by:  Tobe Hooper

Starring:  Jobeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Dominique Dunne, Heather O'Rourke, Oliver Robins, Beatrice Straight, Zelda Rubinstein, James Karen

Poltergeist, produced by Steven Spielberg, takes place in suburban California like E.T., released the same summer as this horror film.  Things seem normal at the outset of Poltergeist, with a typical suburban family in the Freelings going about their daily business.  But, the white noise of the television station which just went off the air (remember that?), beckons the Freelings' youngest daughter Carol Ann (O'Rourke), who is able to see and feel the ghosts which have taken refuge in the television set.

It is not a spoiler that Carol Ann is soon sucked into the television and the Freelings call on parapsychologist Dr. Lesh (Straight) to locate her and return her to the family.  It is here where the movie sags a bit, with Dr. Lesh and Diane Freeling (Williams), having discussions about the hereafter and the spirit world while Carol Ann sits helplessly in the boob tube.  Meanwhile, Steven (Nelson), a real estate agent who sells homes in the neighborhood where he lives, doesn't get much sleep and begins to look like the corpses which would soon show up in his unfinished swimming pool.

Poltergeist is more of a suspense thriller than anything else.  Most of the time it works on its intended level, and even somewhat as a satire on suburban life, and it's fun just to see a television station playing the Star Spangled Banner with the American flag waving in the wind on the screen.   I'm old enough to remember when local stations actually went off the air.  

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) * * *

Directed by:  Steve Pink

Starring:  John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Lizzy Caplan, Chevy Chase, Crispin Glover, Collette Wolfe, Sebastian Stan

Hot Tub Time Machine is a much better time travel comedy than you'd expect.  It has some thoughtfulness along with the humor and the gross-out scenes which back in 2010 were almost compulsory in comedies.  The plot is rather simple, and has a Hangover vibe.  Three longtime buddies travel to a ski resort where they spent a lot of their teenage and young adult years and their hot tub is turned into a time machine by a cryptic repairman (Chase).  They buddies, along with the leader Adam's (Cusack) nephew Jacob (Duke), discover that overnight they were transported to 1986.  

1986 serves as a touchstone year for these men.  Jacob was conceived that year, while Lou (Corddry) was knocked out by a local bully (Stan), Nick (Robinson), whose wife is cheating on him in the present day, realizes he gave up on his dreams of being a singer then, and Adam has a flirtation with a music journalist (Caplan) who could be his one true love.  Hot Tub Time Machine has fun with the time travel aspects.  It isn't Back to the Future, but not many movies could be.  But this movie isn't a raunchfest (raunchiness isn't funny anyway), but it also has a heart.  

The comic performances of the cast lend some weight to the proceedings.  Hot Tub Time Machine is pretty silly on its surface (most time travel movies are), but in the end, we see one character use the situation not just to financially enrich himself and his friends, but also use it as a chance to grow.  I never expected that.  

The Last Showgirl (2024) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Gia Coppola

Starring:  Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Billie Lourd, Brenda Song

Shelly (Anderson) is a showgirl in a long time Vegas show which she learns is closing in two weeks.  At 57 years old, what is she going to do with her career?  She once auditioned for the Rockettes and other Broadway shows years ago, but she grew comfortable with the steady paycheck and being home every night.  The show cost her the formative years with her daughter (Lourd) who now lives in Tucson and holds a grudge.  

Shelly tries to be defiantly hopeful and keep a smile going, but she realizes her prospects are limited.  She would likely join her best friend and former castmate Annette (Curtis) as a casino waitress, and doesn't like the idea of dealing with drunk gamblers who flirt and pay at her.  One of the pitfalls the movie falls into more than once is having its characters stare out towards the horizon or do interpretive dance numbers while songs like Total Eclipse of the Heart play on the soundtrack.  These are fillers and not much more.  They don't contain much power. 

The Last Showgirl is a hit and miss affair which is meant as a showcase for the talents we weren't aware Pamela Anderson has.   Once we get past Anderson's baggage and settle into the character, we see Anderson play Shelly with depth and sweetness.  We feel for her situation and we care about her, which shows that Anderson is no longer the Baywatch character, but a living, breathing human being who ages like all of us.  

Blow Out (1981) * * *

Directed by:  Brian DePalma

Starring:  John Travolta, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, John Lithgow, Curt May

Sound effects man Jack Terry (Travolta), who works on sound for low budget B-movies, is recording outdoor sounds late one night when a car crossing a bridge blows out a tire and plunges into a creek.  Jack saves the woman in the car, but not the driver, who turns out to a state representative tapped to be a future political candidate.  The official story is that of an unfortunate accident, but Jack suspects there's more, especially after listening to the recordings Jack captured of the event.  

Jack repeats his listening obsessively and is convinced that the tire was shot out, which caused the crash.  Sally (Allen), the woman in the car, was a hooker paid to get close to the candidate by the anonymous people who also hired assassin Burke (Lithgow), to shoot out the tire to make it look like a blowout.  While we see Burke talking to his benefactors and planning his next move to kill Sally, Jack starts to sound like a conspiracy theorist when everyone else wants the book closed.  

Travolta and Allen previously teamed with director Brian DePalma in Carrie (1976) and once again they create a terrifying story with ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations.  Jack cares for Sally and wants to protect her, but at the same time, he wants to prove he's right, so he uses Sally as bait to draw out Burke.  This is dangerous for both, of course, because Burke is smart and competent, using words like utilize, objectives, and measure with no emotion when discussing his plans to eliminate any loose ends.  

Jack is correct that the accident was no accident, but he's also a person haunted by a previous government surveillance project which went sideways resulting in the death of the informant who was wearing the wire Jack provided that malfunctioned.   He thinks he can right this wrong in this case, but he finds there may be no redemption.  DePalma, like Martin Scorsese, specializes in stories which take on a subtext of guilt and wrongdoing, with redemption just out of reach.  Travolta's performance isn't flashy nor does it take advantage of his massive box-office appeal at the time.   Instead, we see him here as an actor giving a multi-layered performance, which he has done often, and it provides a strong moral center.  

Scrooged (1988) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Richard Donner

Starring:  Bill Murray, Karen Allen, Robert Mitchum, Carol Kane, Bobcat Goldthwait, Michael J. Pollard, Alfre Woodard, John Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, John Forsythe

Scrooged is a modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol with Bill Murray as the Scrooge-like Frank Cross, the head a television network who couldn't care less about Christmas, but is promoting a live retelling of A Christmas Carol on his network.  "People need to be absolutely terrified to miss this," he tells his Bob Cratchit in the form of his loyal assistant Grace (Woodard), who is among the many Frank takes for granted.   When he learns an elderly woman died after watching the commercial for the show, Frank is borderline elated.   His heart is as cold as the temperatures.

There is hope, however, in the ghost of Lou Heywood (Forsythe), the Jacob Marley who warns Scrooge, er, Cross to change his ways before it's too late, and to also tell him of the visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.   Cross is taken on a tour of his life, which includes a former girlfriend (Allen), who is still alive and available, and a cruel father who thinks he should've gotten a job at four years old. 

I don't need to tell anyone how the story turns out.  Scrooged is a middling telling of this classic tale.  Murray tries mightily to add sarcasm and a comic twist on the character, but we've seen Murray and Scrooge told better before. 

Nosferatu (2024) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Robert Eggers

Starring:  Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgard, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson    

Nosferatu is Bram Stoker's Dracula with the names changed.  The original movie was released in 1922 by director F.W. Murnau and was remade over the years, including this version which is gray, dark, and effectively creepy for most of its running time.  While the atmosphere works most of the time, I found myself not caring that much.  Nosferatu held me at arm's length and the payoff isn't worth the buildup.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) had the same effect on me.  I haven't reviewed it, but this critique will suffice.  Its production values were top notch, and at least there were scenes where Dracula (Gary Oldman) reappears as younger and at least desirable to a young woman like Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), who is Dracula's deceased wife reincarnated.  In Nosferatu, the mistake is made to make Count Orlok (Skarsgard) so visually unappealing.  Orlok is a cadaver with a mustache and never transforms into someone his reincarnated love (Depp) should desire.  Torturing someone with vivid, horrifying dreams and visions is not a great way to convince someone to fall in love with you.  Besides, she's already married to the real estate representative (Hoult), who was sent to your dank castle in Transylvania to purchase land in Germany, 

The older version of Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie was old, but wasn't as decrepit as Count Orlok is here.   Oldman displayed an accent, but it wasn't unintelligible like Skarsgard's, who sounds like he's trying to speak English while having an asthmatic attack.  Ultimately, the first half of Nosferatu was more intriguing than the second half.  The closer we came to a resolution, the more boring it became.  

The Fire Inside (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  Rachel Morrison

Starring:  Ryan Destiny, Brian Tyree Henry, Olunike Adeliyi

The Fire Inside is based on the true story of Olympic gold medal boxer Claressa Shields (Destiny), a teenager from Flint, Michigan who became the unlikely gold medalist at the 2012 London games, only to come home and find being an Olympian doesn't hold much weight when bills have to be paid.  This is not a boxing movie which ends in the Big Fight.  The gold medal match occurs halfway through the movie, with the obligatory training montage scenes before that.  

The Fire Inside isn't Rocky, although Claressa is surely an underdog with a fierce love of boxing that started when she was younger.  The opening scenes circa 2006 show her jogging before dawn to the local gym where Jason Crutchfield, himself a former boxer, trains.  Claressa, like Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby, asks to train to be a fighter.  Jason states he doesn't train girls, but after one round against one of her male counterparts, Jason agrees to train her.  Jason's attitude isn't rooted in sexism or misogyny, but the idea that in 2006, there weren't a lot of female boxers.  Women's boxing didn't become an Olympic sport until 2012, the year Claressa won gold. 

Claressa's home life is troubling, and boxing is her outlet and her passion.  Her mother is an aimless former drug addict.  Claressa admits to being raped when she was a young girl and she and her siblings frequently go hungry.  Jason has a loving wife and children, working steadily at the local cable company.  When Claressa wins the national title and travels to China for the Olympic trials, Jason can't afford to go with her.  Claressa loses her first bout there and squeaks into the Olympic draw, leaving her with self-doubt and resentment towards Jason for not being there. 

The rest is history.  Destiny is a convincing boxer and handles herself well, but the best performance in the movie is Henry's, who brings a steady dose of compassion, love, and strength to Jason.  He tries to be Claressa's manager and publicist when she returns home after winning gold, but finds the endorsements and money other Olympians gain aren't available to her.  A lesser movie would've blamed racism and sexism or even hinted at it, but The Fire Inside understands that sports agents are in the business for money, and there isn't much to be found for a female boxer back then, especially one like Claressa who is brutally honest in her interviews.  Claressa doesn't understand that she needs to play the game, and this doesn't sit well with her, but post-Olympic treatment isn't based necessarily on fairness.  The Fire Inside understands that and in some ways, it's refreshing.  

Mr. Brooks (2007) * * *

 

Directed by:  Bruce A. Evans

Starring:  Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Marg Helgenberger, Danielle Panabaker, Lindsay Crouse

Earl Brooks (Costner) is a successful Portland businessman who was just awarded by the city as its businessman of the year, but later that night, he murders two people in cold blood and burns his clothes in an incinerator.  We learn that Earl has killed many times before and has never been caught.  He is meticulous down to the last detail and troubled detective Tracy Atwood (Moore), who herself is caught up in a messy divorce, is frustrated by her inability to solve Brooks' murders.  

Mr. Brooks is a complex tale of a man at odds with himself.  On the surface, Earl is a family-oriented businessman whom no one can say a bad word about.  He isn't overly friendly and keeps to himself for good reason.  He thinks he has everything wired, until one day a young man named Mr. Smith (Cook) meets him at the office and provides compromising photos showing Mr. Brooks at the murder scene.  Mr. Smith, a voyeur, caught Earl in the act and blackmails him.  His price?  Take him along when Earl commits his next murder.  

Earl is guided by his imaginary alter ego Marshall (Hurt), who acts mostly as the devil on his shoulder.  He laughs off Earl's declarations that he won't kill anymore.  Earl's daughter Jane (Panabaker) also comes home saying she left school back east for fuzzy reasons and is also pregnant.  Earl and Marshall soon understand the truth of Jane's situation and Earl will have to go into the killing business again while trying to control the wildcard that is Mr. Smith.

Mr. Brooks is full of subplots and keeps a steady pace.  I'm sure I left a couple of other characters and plots out for the sake of brevity, but we find ourselves rooting for Earl to not be caught.  Why this dynamic?  It's rooted in the performances.  Costner's Earl Brooks is an intelligent man who loves his family, but also possesses the innate ability to kill.  Mr. Smith, well played by comedian Dane Cook, is a burgeoning psychopath looking for an outlet for his murderous desires.  We are also not without sympathy for Demi Moore's Tracy Atwood, whose job is to catch people like Earl Brooks and is not only dealing with a divorce, but a criminal she put away who escaped from prison and is coming for her. 

Mr. Brooks was supposed to be a trilogy, but its box-office failure prevented that from happening.  The movie serves its purpose as a standalone movie, but in the age of streaming, why not give us another couple of movies to see how the vision would play out?