Kevin Costner Festival
Mr. Brooks
Terrific and original thriller about a renowned businessman with a secret addiction: he is a serial killer. Costner is fantastic in this role, and William Hurt as the manifested inner voice goading him to more killings is a chilling addition. Demi Moore as the cop on his trail with her own demons is astonishingly good as well. And the plot goes into a very interesting direction which I don’t want to spoil.
Definitely one of the best thrillers of the last decades.
Criminal
Another high concept with the ludicrous idea of transferring brain cells from a killed CIA operative (Ryan Reynolds) into the brain of a murderer (Kevin Costner) in order to retrieve intel on a terrorist threatening to destroy western society. Of course, the transfer of memory impacts with the previously lacking in empathy and compensating with violence type, and when he is declared useless he escapes and connects with the wife of the dead CIA operative (Gal Gadot) and her little daughter.
A surprisingly entertaining mix of „Frankenstein“ and „The Fugitive“ (hey, even Tommy Lee Jones as the frail scientist is here), and while the whole thing is absolutely bonkers pulp fiction (yes, even Gary Oldman is here as the hysteric CIA-boss), it is absolutely fun to watch Costner having a ball in the modern Boris Karloff role.
The New Daughter
One of these horror movies which seemed to be pure Direct to Video-fodder when Costner apparently could not get a better offer. But while this one again seems to be constructed from genre leftovers by a Stephen King wannabe, the film is actually very well photographed and edited, and Costner as the divorced father trying to start a new life with his little son and his teenage daughter gives all he can.
One wonders why people always have to buy old houses near the woods where a supernatural terrible thing is happening, but it probably was a bargain for the financially strapped dad. And at least the story does make a point that the realtor conveniently forgot to reveal the, um, horror lurking there. Which, apart from the finale, is gracefully kept off screen, so the gore is minimum. The film actually deals with a father‘s problems with a teenage daughter, her mood swings and her in this case frightening transformation into something else. The ending is an absolute shocker. So, much better than expected and underrated.
Dragonfly
Sold as a „Sixth Sense“ like horror film, this is rather a romantic ghost story about a doctor who has to come to terms with his wife’s death - still feeling she might be alive. Cue the usual strange occurrences which turn the doubter into a believer, while others think he’s nuts (or as they say in need of a vacation). The ending kind of works, but it is really typical Hollywood esoteric humbug, since nobody wanted to make a film which ends with disillusionment. Costner is fine but for my taste not helped by the director and the script. It seems a pure „for hire“ job for him, while he mostly is very involved in the production of his star turns.