Mel Gibson is back in his first screen outing since 2002's Signs. Is it any good?
While it’s been over 7 years since Mel Gibson stepped in front of the camera, he hasn’t exactly stayed out of the headlines – usually for all the wrong reasons. His long-standing battle with alcoholism culminated in his 2006 DUI arrest and an embarrassing anti-Semitic tirade. Away from his personal life he has proved himself quite the able director with 2004’s Passion of The Christ and 2006’s Apocalypto so why the sudden return to acting? He had said a script would have to be extremely good to persuade him onto the screen again, yet looking at the trailer of Edge of Darkness it didn’t exactly capture me.
The film is based on a British mini series from 1985 about a father’s determination to get revenge for his daughter’s death after she had been investigating a corrupt corporation. The mini series was met with wide spread acclaim in the 1980s but Edge of Darkness plays like your bog standard thriller. That’s not to say it’s bad – just that this sort of material has been done far better. I was constantly reminded of Fernando Merielles great, The Constant Gardner while watching.
It doesn’t help that at 54 Gibson has left his Lethal Weapon days loooong behind. Playing Thomas Craven, a homicide detective whose daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is brutally murdered on his front porch he couldn’t convince me that this was a grieving man capable of dishing out some serious pain. I was expecting something like Liam Neeson’s performance in Taken but it never happened. It’s certainly similarly violent but it lacks the visceral element.
While Gibson fails to live up to his earlier work the film is capably directed by New Zealand’s Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale), who slowly builds tension as Craven gets ever closer to unravelling the mystery behind his daughter’s death. It helps that Campbell directed the original mini series so knows the source material like the back of his hand and his experience directing Bond films shows in the excellent chases and portrayal of the evil corporation, ‘Northmoor’.
The support cast is decent with Ray Winstone (Beowulf) as Jedburgh coming across as pleasantly ambiguous and Danny Huston (also in The Constant Gardner) plays one oily smooth operator as the Northmoor chairman.
In the end Edge of Darkness is a DVD worthy outing that provides some decent thrills with a well-trodden story. Ably directed, the film is let down by its familiarity and Gibson, who should be moving away from these movies at his age. Thankfully his next outing, The Beaver is a comedy drama – something he’s far more suited to.
3 1/2 Stars
