Me, Colin, and Diego chose Edge of Darkness over The Book of Eli. Colin, I think, wanted something pretty breezy that might provide some action laughs, Swayze versus Ben Gazzara style. I personally went in hoping for a straight revenge drama. I think it was the trailer, the first thirty seconds, Mel smiling as he picked his girl up from the train station, his daughter then getting capped in his arms. Also, I was nostalgic for Payback. Edge of Darkness is not a revenge movie, nor is it much fun. We chose the wrong movie.
Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a Boston cop welcoming his daughter back for a short visit. Obviously, she's the light of his life, but she has her own stuff going on, an apartment hours away, the start of a new career. On a visit home to dad, she's a puking and nose-bleeding mess. Not quite that bad compared to the buckshot she gets filled with as they step out of the house to head to the hospital.
At first, everyone assumes Thomas was the intended target. Being a cop and all, he does some digging and discovers that Emma'd been working for basically an evil, nuke-developing monster of a corporation. He interviews Emma's evil boss Jack Bennett (Danny Huston), and gets confronted by a shady government-type named Jedburgh (Ray Winstone). Emma had some damaging info and some proper intentions so she had to get got.
The film is less a revenger, more noir conspiracy. It's not a problem per se that the plot is non-sensical. Genre classics like Chinatown and LA Confidential barely make sense. But what those movies are is deceptive non-sensical. With those you get lost less in the artifice, the acting, mostly, and the gorgeous period setting.
Unfortunately, both the sum and the parts of Edge of Darkness are pretty shitty. About 98 percent of the cast is spectacularly bad. Danny Huston is a pretty wooden villain, delivering lines like "How does it feel to lose a daughter?" trying but failing at nastiness. Every bit part, actually, is played by some distracting actor awkwardly delivering their lines.
Director Martin Campbell (Quantum of Solice and the upcoming Green Lantern movie) makes some interesting dramatic choices, particularly re: Thomas' and Emma's relationship. And when I say interesting, I mean bad. I guess he sort of has to seeing as how Emma gets blasted in the first ten minutes. Our first glimpse of her is through some old, scratchy home video of Emma playing on a beach and Thomas speaking to her from behind the camera. This memory, among others, plays through Thomas's head throughout the movie, reminders of how much he loved Emma. These cornball snatches of drama, tinkling music in the background, made my palms sweat. They're shortcuts, which in themselves are fine, but here they're done sloppily and contrary to the film's serious tone.
Gibson is actually pretty solid as he does his crazy-eyed rage that no one really does better. He's got that smile, the one that pretty much stays the same, but can represent mild simmering to full out homicidal rage with slight tweaks of the eyes. Though the father-daughter relationship isn't that well-rendered dramatically, at least it's Mel that's doing the tortured parent. There's a pretty great scene, for instance, when he's sitting in his living room as his fellow cops do chalk outlines of his daughter. Blood-splattered, Mel goes from blankness to boiling in like two seconds flat.
Not surprisingly, the film's best scenes are of Mel and jagged-voiced and mountainous Winstone talking shop. Don't misunderstand, the dialogue isn't better written here, it's just that often that the best noir is just having two gritty guys banter (think Pacino and De Niro in Heat or Pearce and Crowe in LA Confidential).
Unfortunately, Winstone's only on-screen for a couple minutes total, and when he is, it's a bit distracting that you never get a sense of who the hell he is. The film just overreaches for its 90-minute running time. It tries for complexity, but sprawls out of control. IMO, there's nothing wrong with making a nice, quiet, dignified revenge flick. Sometimes, don't overthink. Taken with Liam Neeson Edge of Darkness is not.
