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EDGE OF DARKNESS Send This Review to a Friend
Mel Gibson has always been an actor who commands attention on screen and that is the strongest asset going for “Edge of Darkness,” an otherwise disappointing intended thriller based on a British television miniseries. The film starts provocatively enough when Thomas Craven (Gibson), a Boston police detective and single father, sees his daughter gunned down before his eyes. Craven has to find out who did it and why, and so begins a rather preposterous revenge tale. But the role is made for Gibson. Craven is macho and determined no matter the obstacles.
But as written by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell and directed by Martin Campbell, the plot involving the daughter blowing the whistle against a corporation’s dangerous and secret activity becomes increasingly intricate and far-fetched. Naturally, government cover-up operations are involved, coupled with political corruption, ruthless methods of wiping out opposition and who knows what else. It isn’t that one doubts that such things can and probably do exist. It is the unconvincing way in which all of this is laid out.
There are also the cloying, repeated visions that Craven has of his daughter Emma after she is gone. Bojana Novakovic plays her nicely enough. But these efforts to play up the sentimentality interrupt the action flow. I won’t tell you what the ending is, but the image of father and daughter meant to provide an upbeat finish is doubly cloying.
Ray Winstone as a mysterious operative is one of the more interesting members of the supporting cast, which also includes Danny Huston, Damian Young and Shawn Roberts. A Warner Brothers release.
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