Edge of Darkness (Review)

“I’m the guy with nothing to lose who doesn’t give a shit!”

This film is embedded firmly within the “They messed with the wrong guy” genre. In fact at one point Mel Gibson even looks at a guy and says “I’m the guy with nothing to lose who doesn’t give a shit!”

Duh Mel. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in almost every movie you’ve made you’re that guy as well.

But Edge of Darkness is other things as well within the genre.

– It is a leap of faith film. We’re expected to believe that one guy can be far more resourceful, smarter and effective than the dozens of others investigating the case, even when the entire way others are trying to hamper his progress and in some cases kill him.

– It is a what the? film. At one point Mel holds an in-car conversation with a young woman. The conversation last a few minutes and at the close she says something like “I’m done with this”, and opens the door and steps out. At exactly that moment a car hurtles into her, shears off the car door and leaves her crumpled on the road. (Seconds later Mel pumps a dozen or so rounds into the windscreen where the car then careens over a carefully placed ramp and flips at high speed into the river.) Now back to the car crash, if the woman had 1/ glanced at the rear view mirror or 2/ chosen to exit the car at almost any other point: the other car would have harmlessly yet noisily flown by with no impact. It is practically impossible to plan a hit in this way given such normally random circumstances. But it did look pretty cool when it happened on film, no argument there.

– It is a quiet/loud film. Dialogue is generally toned down so that you progressively concentrate a bit harder to hear what is going on and then BLAMMO!, something happens and people bleed a bit or exit the film suddenly. It means that the loud bits are more impactful but in the cinema I was in meant I missed a lot of the dialogue as the quiet bits were just too damn quiet.

– It is most of all a black and white film. The bad guys are bad from the start, the good guys are easily identifiable. Good and bad die along the way and we know from minute 1 Mel will end up in a shootout with the lead baddies.

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So what is Edge of Darkness about?

Mel is Tom Craven, a Boston cop. After his daughter is killed in an apparent attempt on his life Mel, I mean Tom switches to Payback mode and proceeds to “get to the bottom of this”.

Along the way he finds that his daughter Emma was part of “something bigger”, in this case the “something” involves a large corporation, headed by a smarmy prick named Bennett. From this point though it seems that as Tom gets closer to the truth someone is cleaning things up from the other end.

As Tom continues his search he meets Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone in a manner that suggests that he is weary with his occupation, but is still not a man to be fucked with. Jedburgh is “the guy called in when there is a problem”, he is cold, dispassionate, dangerous and apparently all-knowing in a way that I hope can only exist in films.

Despite all the clichés and pseudo-warnings above Edge of Darkness is good at what it does, the action is good, the bad guys suitably bad and Tom is allowed to dispose of as many of them as he likes with seemingly no implications along the way.

The plot also allows for Tom to progress his search and move up the line towards the Big Bad Guy at the finale in a reasonably logical order without losing the audience, and if things get a little convoluted Jedburgh  simply appears so that they can have a conversation and allow everyone to catch up.

Basically it is Taken with politicians and white collar businessmen instead of European prostitution ring members. Now I thought Taken was one of the better mindless action flicks of the last few years, and while Edge of Darkness is not in that league it is a reasonable facsimile and worth a look.

I might add a disclaimer here and say that I loathe Mel Gibson the man for two reasons; his moronic outburst to the police a couple years back that proved he was (at least at that time) a pretty worthless human being, and the fact that he makes good movies and is likeable, even when playing a ruthless “guy with nothing to lose”. The second point makes the first one that much harder to swallow.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. This film might be a lot of things, but at the very least it is always entertaining.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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