20 - Mr. Brooks

    A successful man deals with his daughter in trouble, being blackmailed, and a police investigation while being a methodical and organized serial killer.
    I wish I liked this more.  I admire it.  It's really packed with ideas and side plots.  It must have been a pain to put together.  And each of the ideas that are being explored are good ones.  The problem is just that there are too many of them.  It gets harder to follow than it should.  This might make it more rewarding on repeat viewings, but at least for the first one, it's just too much.
    The plot at the center of the movie is the relationship between the father and his daughter.  This story is by far the most interesting.  Then we get a cat-and-mouse story between the father and an investigator.  This is where I got bored.  They develop the investigator the same way that nearly every serial killer investigator works - the investigator is driven, and is unusually skilled.  Well, that's the only way that a cat-and-mouse story works.  I think what I didn't like is that more time was spent on developing what amounts to a stock character.
    This actually brings me to a secondary point.  I'm not too picky about actors.  I think that the material guides the cast, for the most part, and a skilled writer can raise up weak actors.  But for some reason, I just don't care for Demi Moore.  There's a chance that I don't mind her elsewhere, since I've seen her in a few movies before.  In this movie, she just seemed like she was not a supporting character; she was playing the role as if she were a lead.
    Most of these plots are enough, and a carefully balanced script would be able to juggle them perfectly.  The one plot that really helps to derail things is the exploration of another killer that is coming after the investigator.  Once that one kicks in, it gets nearly impossible to pay attention.
    Still, it's not a bad movie.  With some editing, I think it could be really good.  As it is, it won't have the broad appeal it could have.  It's hard to say that's a bad thing.  We need more movies that break convention a bit.

     One thing that bothered me.  There's a plot point, that involves someone claiming that urine is DNA evidence.  This is not true.  It's only DNA evidence if the person happens to be unhealthy, but a normal person's urine is not DNA evidence.  The fact that I knew this, and that it jumped out at me, is a bad sign.