TITLE: Edge of Darkness
STARRING: Mel Gibson, Danny Huston, Ray Winstone, Bojana Novakovic
DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
STUDIO: GK Films/BBC Films/Icon Productions
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 117 min
RELEASE DATE: January 28 , 2010 (Theatrical), May 11, 2010 (DVD/Blu-Ray)

By Stephen McCarthy
Staff Writer, Evil Genius

It has been seven years since Mel Gibson’s last starring role in a movie, and I had questions about how he would perform after such an absence. After watching this movie, it was like he never stopped acting. This is vintage Mel Gibson in a role that resembles the ones he played in Ransom and Conspiracy Theory. It’s the type of role that suits Mel Gibson perfectly; a lot of emotional display with some tense action sequences.

Mel Gibson stars as Thomas Craven, a detective from Boston. His daughter comes to visit, and just as soon is murdered right next to him as they are leaving his house. He begins to look through his old case files to find someone who might want to take revenge upon him, but after looking through his daughter’s belongings it becomes apparent that she was the intended target. This leads Craven down the path of a huge conspiracy that he must uncover to get justice for his daughter.

Photo from RottenTomatoes.com.

The first half of this movie is a wave of emotions as we watch Craven transform. There is the grief and immense sadness over the loss of his daughter, the frustration and anger as he uncovers more of what has happened.  Mel Gibson nails it and while it all seems a bit familiar and not anything really new out of him, it is a very enjoyable and somewhat of a nostalgic performance in a way.  And while Mel does just as good of a job in the second half of the film, he can not carry this film across the finish line on his own.

The biggest problem with the second half was that it felt like Craven made no significant progress in his quest.  I think that this is probably a casualty of the adaptation process, as Edge of Darkness was originally a six part BBC miniseries in the mid eighties.  In addition to his quest slowing down, it felt like other important characters such as Senator Jim Pine, Jack Bennett (Danny Huston) and Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) lacked the screen time necessary to shift the focus to other areas.  While I have not seen the original award-winning miniseries, that is the impression that I got when watching the movie.

Even though both the television series and the movie were directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Mask of Zorro), I guess twenty years away from the material tends to alter the it in addition to cutting the screen time down to roughly forty percent of what it was.  Despite the problems with the second half of the film, I have always felt Campbell to be an underrated director.  When there is action there is always a clear shot of what is taking place and none of the shaky camera work that has plagued films like the Bourne series.  Campbell handles everything well enough and keeps the tension going but it just was not enough to over come the problems with this adaptation.

The DVD/Blu-Ray bonus features include a look back at the miniseries, a featurette on Gibson’s return to acting, a profile piece on Campbell, a look at how Boston was used in the film, and additional/alternate scenes.

RATING: 5/10