Based on the critically acclaimed BBC Mini series, director Martin Campbell’s revenge thriller is a hefty mixing of genres that begins as a family drama, continues on as a revenge action film and ends as a conspiracy mystery where Mel Gibson is able to shine yet again as grieving single father Thomas Craven. Possessing a passable and forgivable Boston accent, Gibson as Craven is a man whose life has garnered him a distance from his only living family member, his daughter Emma. Noticeably disturbed and ill, Emma and Thomas re-connect and attempt to seal their relationship but all fate is sealed when a sick Emma is shot outside of Thomas’ house by a masked gunman. Working outside the law, Thomas decides that there is much more to the murder than meets the eye, and he begins unraveling a mystery that is beyond anything he could have imagined.
With a reported series of re-shoots, “Edge of Darkness” is much more action oriented than you’d perceive it to be as Thomas finds himself at the tail end of violent attacks the closer he gets to uncovering who caused Emma’s death. Campbell bases the story around the idea that we never really do get to know our loved ones as much as we want, and can lose touch of who they are and what they’ve done until we realize that we never knew them at all. Intermeshed with scenes of home movies featuring a young Emma, we get glimpses in to the relationship of Thomas and his daughter and they give off clues to what happened to her. Are these home videos, or are they flashes of memories Thomas is being given in the midst of his traumatic aftermath of watching his daughter be violently murdered? Adding an extra touch of mystique, the great Ray Winstone plays the enigmatic Jedburgh, a representative for a corporation connected to Emma who seems to want to help Thomas in his journey.
Or perhaps is leading him on a trail to a face to face confrontation. Nevertheless the exchanges and scenes with Gibson and Winstone make for the best moments in the entire thriller with sharp dialogue and an interesting mystique the two men play off of one another. Always top notch when playing a character with a few screws loose and nothing to lose, Gibson adds a needed urgency to the character of Craven who seems incredibly unhinged thanks to his days as an officer and a war vet, and is pushed over the edge after Emma’s horrible murder. The film transforms in to a statement about humanity and our government and the price of human suffering in the name of protecting our best interests while Craven’s own journey is that of ending not only his own suffering but the suffering of his daughter and anyone else’s child. This ends as a masterful display of talent with an interesting narrative that twists and turns faster than the audience can keep up and I enjoyed what it had to offer as a dark little thriller.
I must warn from hereon in that there are massive spoilers to “Edge of Darkness,” so here we go: the primary problem with “Edge of Darkness” is that it’s so predictable and anyone with half a brain will understand before Craven does that this all just doesn’t add up. Even before the daughter was killed and is vomiting blood I assumed there was some sort of government foul play taking place that would inevitably end her life and when she’s murdered it’s pretty obvious she had knowledge of something she couldn’t quite spill until it was too late. As for most of the twists and turns it was obvious what was going to happen. From the moment we meet Emma’s doomed ex-boyfriend to a contact who is run over before our eyes, the government men in black conspiracy plot devices are all ham handed and haphazardly thrown in without a shred of suspense.
This, in spite of the fact we’re supposed to be in Thomas’ shoes wondering why this lunacy is happening and where it’s leading to. Meanwhile in the closing scenes it’s never quite clear if the screenwriters know how to end this entire charade of government cover ups and commentary on human suffering, so we’re left with a pretty hokey final scene that just screams “We had nothing else to inject in to this, so we ended it as quickly as possible.” Thus Craven’s whole emotional journey ends abruptly and without any weight whatsoever. Uneven, heavy handed and predictable “Edge of Darkness” is an otherwise entertaining revenge thriller with Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone shining above material that transforms throughout the course of its plot focusing on the emptiness of human sacrifice and how memories can often lie to us. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s worth your time if you’re in the mood for a Gibson fix.