‘Edge Of Darkness’ is a conspiracy thriller starring Mel Gibson who's back in a starring role for the first time in almost a decade. Gibson plays Boston detective Tom Craven, an everyman who has gone through life pretty much unnoticed until his daughter is viciously gunned down in front of him. After grieving his loss for all of 10 seconds Craven starts an investigation into his daughter's killer that leads him in a rampage through the city. What he finds uncovers corruption and conspiracy at every level from state Senators and CEOs to government agents. He also finds along the way that his daughter may not be exactly the person she said she was.
Make no mistake about it, Gibson is back and carries this movie on his shoulder from start to finish. In the edge of darkness you get to see why we love gets in the 1st place before the DUIs and anti-Semitism. Mel proves he can still carry a movie, make a joke, and create an empathetic character. I don't want make this all about the actor that's pretty much what this movie is, a great actor in an okay role. Steeped in bad writing, uneven pacing, and unclear situations the flick becomes an enjoyable movie with real problems. Generally you won't hear me talk about bad writing, I don't mind some cheesy dialogue or if certain things need to be met with some suspension of disbelief, I mean it is a movie. That's not the stuff I'm talking about here, there were several instances where character said something that just didn't make sense or didn't fit in with what was going on. It was almost as if the writers were including inside jokes to each other. I also can't see to forgive filmmakers with the type of resources these had for having completely ridiculous situations. For instance, in the film there is a private security firm that is tailing Gibson as he goes about his investigation, the entire time they are completely obvious and make no attempt to stay hidden. They would have been less conspicuous had they been driving a neon green car. This just seems like lazy writing to me. Does it take away from the movie? Sure it does, but somehow the film still manages to come up on the good side of enjoyable.
I already talked about Mel's performance so what are some of the other good things about the movie? Well, Ray Winstone for one. This guy always seems to bring it and make better any movie he's in. The laughs also make this movie well worth it, how they screwed the writing so bad in some places but still managed to deliver great laughs in what you think would be an un-laughable situation is beyond me, but they did it. I mean it, I laughed hard four or five times during this movie, and I have been to plenty of comedies that didn't make me laugh that much. The violence in this flick is up there too, they really caught me by surprise with how gory they made it. People are literally blown to bits from gunshot wounds with flesh flying and blood spraying. They also did a great job with the tension in the film which results in some very real jump scares that are sure to get you out of your seat. Lastly, I'll only praise Gibson one more time and that's for his accent. When I first saw the trailers for this film I swore that I would hate his take on a Boston accent. He certainly didn't nail it but it wasn't as distracting as I thought it would be. It kind of sounds like a toned down version of his Three Stooges impression from ‘Lethal Weapon’ and not at all like it should but for some reason it worked.
So what's the verdict? Well, if this was summer time he had a lot of options out there I would probably say wait for the rental. But seeing as how it is January and the only other major release in the past weeks was ‘Legion’ I'm going to go ahead and say catch this one in theaters. I honestly don't think that anyone will regret seeing this movie, and I'm sure a great time. If I'm being completely honest, the things I complained about are really that big a deal and I'm sure most people wouldn't even notice. So if you're a fan of Gibson, or just like conspiracy thrillers ‘Edge of Darkness’ is probably for you. I just think it could've been a tiny bit better.
