Edge Of Darkness
Much had been made of this. Granted, it may have been bulled up and anticipated more by critics and those in the industry more than those that put their bums on the seats and pay to watch it, but there was an air of excitement abound merely at the thought of Mel Gibson getting back in front of the cameras again. Personally, I was also looking forward to it. Nobody does quiet insanity and barely justifiable revenge quite like Gibson, as we have seen in the first Lethal Weapon, Ransom and Payback to name but three. He does like to brood and boil whenever he gets the chance, it seems.
So it was no surprise then to find Gibson heralding a return on screen heroics, anchoring this tale of a father wronged and doing everything in his power to put it right. My only surprise was that he didn’t end up playing Liam Neeson’s role in Taken, which if I’m honest, is a much more polished, stylised example of the kind of thing Gibson and Campbell are trying to produce here. Edge Of Darkness doesn’t quite plummet the depths that Taken does, maybe simply because of the fact that Gibson doesn’t really want to be seen in such a hardened light, given his recent media antics of the past couple of years.
When Thomas Craven’s (Gibson) grown up daughter is gunned down on his front porch right next to him during a brief visit, the police detective and his colleagues assume that he was the target for the gunman. Luckily for Craven, being a police officer, he has access to many of the tools that as mere members of the public, we would not be. He is able to, despite the protests of his superiors, investigate the case himself and gets deeper and deeper into a web of secrets and untold truths that dismantle his previous view of his daughter’s secretive life and events unravel a story far more dangerous than Craven first imagined.
The story skips along at quite a pace for most of the film, but also enjoys moments of calm, usually involving the regular visits from Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) who is a mysterious confidante and flits in and out of the movie at convenient moments to drive the plot. This part was originally played by Robert De Niro, though due to ‘differences’ on set, he never made it past the first couple of days, when Winstone was brought in as a replacement. Winstone does a perfectly good job portraying the dangerous, clued-up professional, but you can’t help but wonder how much more threatening the same character would have been played by De Niro and how on the money the original casting probably was.
Campbell lays the dark mood on with a trowel so much so that you expect it to be raining all the time, a la Se7en, but this is nowhere near as sophisticated in its story-telling as Fincher’s effort, which is a surprise given Campbell's inarguable talents directing Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye and more so Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. When Richard Donner put Gibson through his paces, he really managed to pull a suicidal performance from him and Campbell looks like he tried to do the same here, but simply fell a few feet short.
For all this however, Edge Of Darkness in not short of intrigue, twists and even the odd shock. It is easily worth sitting through for the sheer rollercoaster elements, even if the plot wavers from time to time and you do find yourself gunning for the good guy, as with Taken. The question of morality doesn’t raise its head here until the last few minutes, as the film doesn’t go to quite the places that Taken does, but nonetheless, rooting for revenge is fun as most of the audience want to see justice being done and in that respect, it’s fair to say that most audience members will come away satisfied.
A good day for Gibson, and a relief for the rest of us to see him back again in his first leading role since Signs in 2002. Not before time, and I would hope at least, that he doesn’t leave it so long again next time.
