Edge of Darkness

It's no secret that Edge of Darkness is an important movie for Mel Gibson, and serves as an opportunity for him and the major Hollywood studios to see if there's still an interest in the star after having not had a leading role since 2002's Signs, and several personal and legal tabloid incidents. My reaction after seeing the film? He's still an intriguing screen presence. He's older and a lot more leather-skinned than you might remember him, and the character he plays here isn't his deepest or most memorable. But, he makes it his own, nonetheless.

The movie throws him into a complex, and somewhat silly conspiracy theory thriller, where he plays a grizzled but kindhearted homicide detective named Thomas Craven. Thomas is tough as nails, but generally a good guy. He doesn't seem to have any vices (he prefers a ginger ale over any alcoholic beverage), and his 24-year-old daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is the light of his life. When Emma pays a surprise visit, Thomas notices that something is wrong. She seems violently ill, and suffers from brief bursts of nausea. Thomas tries to take her to the hospital, but as soon as they step out the front door, a masked gunman cries out and shoots Emma dead before fleeing. The authorities and the press assume that the bullet that killed his daughter was intended for him, but he's not so sure when he searches through Emma's belongings and finds a loaded gun. Digging further, Thomas discovers that there are a lot of people connected to his daughter fearing for their lives, including Emma's boyfriend (Shawn Roberts) and a former co-worker (Caterina Scorsone). The signs all seem to point that Emma was trying to be a whistle blower at the corporation where she worked, Northmoor Research Facility, which handles nuclear materials for the U.S. government.

Edge of Darkness doesn't rewrite the rules of the thriller genre, but it plays by the rules well enough to entertain. The film itself is based on a five part British TV mini series, and although I can't compare it to the source material, the film does not feel too rushed or tossed together. The screenplay by William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell has to pull a difficult balancing act of juggling a convoluted and sometimes confusing plot, with a lot of characters. First and foremost, there's the shady boss at the corporation where Emma used to work, who is obviously hiding something. He's played by Danny Huston, who portrays the character as a smarmy villain who thinks he's above it all. He sometimes comes across as almost a James Bond villain, hiding in his sleek fortress-like corporation, poisoning and gassing his victims, and dumping bodies in the water, using his connections to cover them up as "accidents". Meanwhile, there's a shady government operative (Ray Winstone), and equally shady government figures and Senators who all have plenty of secrets to hide. It's not very hard to point out the bad guys in this movie, as they usually drive around in big, black, suspicious-looking vehicles that practically scream "property of evil henchmen".

It's all ridiculous, of course, and we usually are one step ahead of the characters. Not even the seemingly innocent character who ends up double crossing Gibson's character and selling him out to the bad guys is much of a surprise. Despite it all, I found it enjoyable in an escapist, popcorn entertainment sort of way. You pay to see Mel Gibson pissed off and seeking revenge against slimy corporate and political people, and you get it here. You also get it done rather well. The entire cast is strong, and director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) keeps the pace lively enough so that we're engaged in the search for the truth. The movie makes some missteps, such as some scenes early on when Gibson's character has "conversations" with his dead daughter, and the film's final scene is kind of goofy in the way it tries to put a feel good spin on a relatively downer ending. Fortunately, it does not step into the area of wrong-headedness too often, and managed to hold my interest.

The movie all rests on Gibson, however. His character of Thomas Craven sometimes seems kind of one note in his quest for revenge, but he manages to sneak in a little sly, vicious fun here and there, such as a scene where he tells a person he's interrogating to take off his glasses, and when the man complies, Gibson punches him in the face. We don't exactly get a chance to feel for the character. Aside from a scene where he scatters his daughter's ashes on a beach they used to visit when she was a child, we don't really get to see him truly mourn for her. Still, he fits the role of the angry vengeance-driven hero pushed to the edge well. We can sense his fuse getting shorter in each passing scene, and he does get to show that intensity that made him famous. He gives just the right amount of rage to get the audience behind his quest for revenge. Now if he could have actually brought some genuine characteristics or emotion, this could have been a good movie, instead of a fun escapist thriller.

I'm recommending the film for what it is. It shows that Gibson still has what it takes, and it's made well enough. Edge of Darkness is not a great movie, but it works on all the right basic levels. It's a vendetta movie, it's an entertaining one, it's ridiculous but not so much that it winds up hurting the film, and that's really all that needs to be said.

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