Edge Of Darkness is a proper January cinema movie, which means that while it isn’t particularly bad (that’s the preserve of non-Oscar bait movies in February), it just sort of passes in front of your eyes and it’s very difficult to get genuinely drawn in or excited by what you’re seeing. The film is mainly intriguing for being Mel Gibson’s return to the screen. While most have been saying it’s his first film since his self-imposed hiatus following his 2006 DUI arrest (and its attendant anti-Semitic remarks and calling policewomen ‘sugartits’), it’s actually his first starring role since 2002’s sign.
To be honest though the interest in seeing Mel back on the silver screen wears thin quite quickly, as he’s just the same as he’s always been, except a bit older and craggier. There’s little attempt to stretch things from the old Gibson revenge flick framework, ensuring that despite the fact he’s been gone for seven and a half years, it feels like we’ve seen this movie before. The main change is that this time Mel’s older and there’s a dash of Taken thrown into the mix (although it’s not as frenetic and single-minded as that movie).
Gibson plays veteran Boston PD homicide detective Thomas Craven, who is stunned when his daughter is shot to death in front of his eyes. While everyone assumes Thomas was the real target, the detective sets out to prove otherwise. He initiates his own private investigation into events and soon comes face to face with conspiracies involving shadowy corporations and government sponsored murder. As you might expect from this sort of plot, the events get more implausible as the film goes on, although at least there’s a decent amount of action and people running around, with Mel’s main investigative tactic being to hit people.
The original 1985 BBC mini-series the film is based on is a tense, six-part thriller that slowly lures you into an ever more dangerous and insane world, which the main character finds himself incapable of tearing himself away from because of his grief and need for answers. It’s a highly political Thatcher-era piece, which won six BAFTAs and is well worth watching. However the new version, which Martin Campbell directed 25 years after he made the original, bows to the demands of modern Hollywood, which is for thrillers to be disposable, unchallenging and made up of pick ‘n’ mix standard parts.
It’s a movie that wants to be political and introspective, but rather than building tension it throws in as many plot strands from the original as possible, so that any deeper meaning gets lost in a sea of ‘things happening’. It purely comes down to an angry Mel running around with a gun looking for the people who’ve wronged him. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it would have been nice if the film could have been as thoughtful and interesting as it occasionally hints it wants to be.
In some ways it’s a shame because in the early stages Edge Of Darkness seems like it’s going to be something far more interesting, with Mel giving a convincing portrait of a man utterly destroyed by the death of his child and desperate for answers that mean it wasn’t his fault. However this interest in character and theme quickly falls out the window so that the film has time to fit in as many deaths and implausible conspiracy elements (with no weight to back them up) as possible.
With Campbell having recently made Casino Royale and one of the screenwriters being The Departed’s William Monahan, you might have expected Edge Of Darkness to offer a bit more than very standard and not particularly thrilling thrills. The only time it comes close to getting really interesting is in the interplay between Gibson’s driven Craven and the shadowy ‘fixer’ Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone. Jedburgh is an enigmatic figure who shows up in Craven’s garden and might be willing to help Thomas, but he may also just be cleaning up after the bad guys or he could purely be out for himself. It adds an interesting note of tension to a movie that otherwise feels like it’s largely going through the thriller motions.
The film looks slick, the action ain’t bad, the conspiracies get ever more convoluted, Mel’s back in familiar territory and you probably wouldn’t object if you rented it from Blockbusters. Whether it’s worth the price of a cinema ticket is another question, because despite the big budget look and excellent production values, Edge Of Darkness never rises above being watchable but not particularly thrilling.
Overall Verdict: Despite being gone for seven and a half years, Mel’s return is a very standard Gibson flick that ticks the thriller boxes while never really gripping the audience.
Reviewer: Phil Caine
