KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
Cast: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Marg Helgenberger
Director: Bruce A. Evans Running time: 122 mins
Rating: R16, contains violence, offensive language and nudity
Screening: Hoyts, SkyCity, Rialto, Matakana
Verdict: Promising killer thriller becomes a cluttered and messy disaster
Initial promise drowns in a tide of subplot complications in this sometimes slick and supremely nihilistic murder thriller which attempts to inject life into Kevin Costner by making him a bad guy. He's Earl Brooks, happily married businessman of the year in Portland, Oregon and, as we soon discover, the city's Thumbprint Killer, a serial murderer who specialises in slaughtering copulating couples and using their thumbs to leave his signature in their blood before arranging their corpses in artful poses.
Such a outlandish character had a good chance of standing up, not just because it casts Costner against type, but because the film gives him an alter ego, Marshall (Hurt) who is visible and audible to us and Brooks, but to no one else who shares the frame. In the hands of one of America's best character actors, Marshall - who is constantly urging Brooks to surrender to his black and deep desires - is an invention ridiculous enough to work. But the film lacks the courage of its camp convictions: what might have been a tantalising piece of modern Grand Guignol tries to be a lot of other things as well and succeeds at none.
Writer-director Evans and co-writer Raynold Gideon scripted Starman and Stand By Me, 80s films that have aged well. But this film heads off in several directions at once: Brooks is photographed in compromising circumstances by a nutter (Cook) who blackmails him to take him along on the next job; a cop (Moore) on the Thumbprint Killer's trail is being stalked by an escaped killer she busted and is going through an ugly divorce; and Mr and Mrs Brooks' daughter Jane comes home from college with a big surprise.
With all this going on, it's no wonder Costner doesn't know how Brooks is meant to behave: psychopath, loving Dad, benevolent employer, cool customer. It feels like moving from one cinema to the other and Costner's in every film - scary stuff.
Making matters worse are the plot's myriad implausibilities: you can't get into a safe deposit box with a copied key; a smart woman worth $60 million doesn't begrudge her loser ex $750K when she badly needs him out of her hair; domestic vacuum cleaners don't defeat forensic examination. It's hard to know what Hurt - the film's sole true pleasure - must have thought of this mess. Maybe he was wondering what happened to the interesting film it might have been.
