Edge of Darkness (Campbell, 2010)

Underneath the generic sounding title and the misleading advertising campaign, Edge of Darkness is a talky political thriller with uncommon depth. It is packaged as a revenge flick but finds firm footing as a vehicle signaling Mel Gibson’s return after an eight year hiatus.

The films setup would put it in the same league as last years absurd action pic Taken. Gibson’s Thomas Craven has a working man’s honesty and integrity. As a veteran of the Boston police force, he is left grieving after his daughter, visiting him during an impromptu day off from work, is gunned down outside his apartment. Their scenes together, both before she dies and in flashbacks as a child from his past, anchor and thereafter channel Craven’s eventual rage and drive. This is in direct contrast to Taken’s one-note revenge movie mode, based on formula and lack of rational, where we never felt the anguish of the father nor the hurt he felt at a loss so great.

Director Martin Campbell’s slow build approach is used effectively in startling the audience into submission. Given how quiet and wordy much of the film is the few sequences of violence are brutal and jolting. Even when we know, as the trailers have prepared us for it, that Emma Craven will be shot, the scene where this happens is shocking in its cruelty. Campbell, who also directed the BBC mini series twenty five years ago on which this film is based, has by now mastered the tempered techniques he utilized in making Casino Royale such an audience favourite of the Bond series.

Like last year’s equally rousing State of Play, also based on a British television mini-series, Edge of Darkness has the profundity of a book while still being condensable enough to meet the lean, finite demands of a two hour motion picture. Perhaps this represents a new breed of films that don’t use literary mediums as sources of adaptation but instead other visual mediums such as television mini-series (especially British), which present a more natural supply of ripe material. The American media, never tired of vilifying celebrities such as Mel Gibson for their personal lives, have given the film a cold response and put to doubt their ability to objectively judge the final product (as they did with Tom Cruise a couple of years ago). Gibson’s involvement with this film, no stranger to movies about revenge, lost causes or suffering for dead children, renders this a deliberate choice on his part, but also allows us to welcome him in a familiar role. Anyone else would have probably been less successful.

Rating: 4/5