Movie Review: EDGE OF DARKNESS Starring Mel Gibson

You wouldn’t believe it but I’ve actually wanted to see Edge of Darkness since its release back in 2010, at the time I thought it looked like a pretty slick action movie which saw Gibson back to his Lethal Weapon days. That’s not really what I got here, Gibson now looks old and if I’m honest I think his off camera efforts are a lot better than his ones in front. BBC have been broadcasting the Olympics so there hasn’t been a whole lot else on TV this week, then just after Usain Bolt won the 100m final by a street they decided to air this another movie late on a Sunday night.

Starring: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Bojana Novakovic, Danny Huston and Shawn Roberts

The Plot

Gibson plays Detective Thomas Craven, a cop who plays by the rules until his activist daughter Emma (Novakovic)) is shot and killed right in front of him. From there Craven doesn’t give a s*!t anymore and makes it his mission to break as many rules as possible whilst uncovering just what his daughter was onto, he quickly discovers that her murder was to do with a conspiracy from a secretive government department who are funded by the US to make weapons, however they are also selling them to the enemy on the side. Not only did Emma know about this but she was actively involved.

The Verdict

I was just board really, nothing more I can say. Edge of Darkness is trying to be some kind of super cool government conspiracy thriller, it fails to do that almost entirely and in my opinion if its conspiracy that your after then there are a lot better options than this, some of which I have already reviewed. I felt no emotional attachment to characters at all, not even Craven himself, I ended up just watching this (whilst nodding in and out of consciousness) to see how the conspiracy ended and for the sake of this review.

For me if Edge of Darkness does anything well it’s the actors themselves, we know that Gibson is brilliant and has been for maybe the last 30 years, he is good here and weight is definitely added to scenes which involve him. However, it’s British actor Ray Winstone who probably impressed me most, he plays “Edinburgh”, an agent working for himself seemingly, and he hires himself out to the highest bidder, usually secretive government departments and “cleans up” evidence. Although I thought his mission would be to kill Tomas Craven, he actually turns out to help him, as long as Craven doesn’t arrest anyone and cause a public nuisance for North Moor.

I never managed to catch the original BBC series that this movie is adapted from but from what I’m lead to believe the movie really suffers from being to short, offering no real justice to just how good the original was, not like Hollywood to go do that eh. The original had a supernatural element to it in which Craven’s daughter visited him from the afterlife, that doesn’t happen here, although he does hear her voice, but it comes with no real weight behind it. I won’t spoil the ending just in case you do want to watch it following this but that’s the only point where supernatural comes into Edge of Darkness and your pretty much left to make up your own mind.

Summing it up I didn’t enjoy this movie at all, it tries to be dark and edgy and at times it’s a little edgy, it’s pretty much dark all the time, oh and some one should have a word with the sound engineer as this movie is way to quiet, even with the TV extremely loud. All in all Edge of Darkness won't have you on the edge of your seat.

The Music

Terrible I’m afraid, the music score is provided by George and Ira Gershwin (I had to look that up) and is mostly featured during the dark gritty or action sequences, I found it old fashioned, failing to add any intensity at all.

Would I watch it again?

Nope, I don’t think I will, although I would say that seeing Mel Gibson back doing this type of thing wasn’t all bad and his latest offering of Get The Gringo is still something I would like to see at some point.