Boston Detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is excited to see his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic – Drag Me To Hell), who is visiting him for the first time in a long while. She works out of town and rarely sees her father so the two have a lot to catch up on. Craven and his daughter are leaving his house one night when a car pulls up by his door and opens fire on them both, instantly killing Emma. Craven is convinced that this drive-by hit was meant for him and vows to find the culprits and make them pay for taking his only daughter. As he investigates the murder, he uncovers some startling secrets about what Emma did for a living and slowly realises that he wasn’t in fact the intended target, Emma was. Craven’s investigation delves into the murky world of corporate espionage as he looks to solve the puzzle of what Emma was involved in, how deep this conspiracy lies and just who is responsible for ordering the hit on his daughter.
Edge Of Darkness is based on the hugely popular BBC TV series. Translating a mini-series into a Hollywood film is hard enough, let alone relocating it from England to America. This film tries to deliver a tense, politically themed thriller with Mel Gibson on board in a career-resurrecting role. Sadly it fails and falls well short of those lofty aspirations.
Firstly the story has huge plot holes. The characters all act and behave in absurd ways that only seem to extending the runtime of the film and don’t add anything to the narrative. It starts off quite promisingly, Mel Gibson plays the gritty detective quite well and his relationship with is daughter is subtly played out with intrigue and affection. Once she is taken out of the picture, we expect Mel to turn psycho and takeout anyone responsible for her death. Instead Craven meanders across Boston piecing together the puzzle of her death but doing very little with the evidence he finds.
There are at least 3 occasions when Craven is face to face with those responsible for his daughter’s death. He knows they are guilty, they know that he knows they are guilty. But he does nothing. Why? This makes no sense at all. The hit ordered on Emma’s life is absurd too - for a death to be covered up with very little media exposure you would expect a little tact to come into play. Instead the killers opt to kill her on the doorstep of her (detective) father’s house, in a busy residential neighbourhood, with a shotgun thus leaving the possibility of witnesses and a huge amount of public awareness.
Mel Gibson hands in a good performance as Thomas Craven but he is a shadow of his former self. This won’t put Gibson back to the top of the A-List; he just doesn’t have the material to work with here. After a promising start his character rarely feels like a scorn father looking to take out vengeance. He could learn a lot from Liam Neeson’s turn in Taken. His accent also shifts quite a bit throughout the film. We’ll assume its Mel’s attempt at Bostonian but it just distracts the viewer. The best part of Edge Of Darkness is without doubt Ray Winstone as Jedburgh, a government official and assassin who helps point Craven in the right direction. He downplays his character but oozes charm, charisma and deadly threat throughout. His exchanges with Craven are also well scripted and a joy to watch.
Edge Of Darkness is marketed completely wrong too. The trailer and posters make this out to be Taken 2. It’s not; this is a politically charged thriller heavy on dialogue and low on action. I have no problem with that, but what I do have a problem with is a film that does neither genres justice. The thriller aspect of Edge Of Darkness feels tired and familiar and the action never gets out of second gear. Edge of Darkness is a massive missed opportunity and one that won’t stay with viewers for very long. Mel Gibson doesn’t do enough here to re-establish himself as a serious player in Hollywood and with a plot weighed down with ridiculous circumstance, unbelievable coincidence and paper-thin villains, it’s a movie that disappoints throughout.
ShareThis
