Edge of Darkness

It is a comeback special as an '80s TV series and a penitent movie star attempt to pull off a symbiotic revival. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paul Martin feels like he has seen it all before.

Mel Gibson is back, and this time he's pissed. Er, that is 'pissed' in the American sense of being angry, not in the British sense of being drunk. Which is a relief, because we are all now very aware that when the Gibster gets drunk then the trouble really gets going. Indeed following that infamous 2006 DUI arrest, during which the Australian actor's mouth ran away with him to some very dark places indeed (and silly ones too, if there is any soupçon of truth in the “sugar tits” line), there will be some people for whom a new Gibson-headlined picture is a prospect to which they simply cannot not say no. For those though who were willing to accept the apologies and the assertions that those anti-Semitic remarks were most certainly not a reflection of his genuine views, then it is surely with no little curiosity that they will approach Edge of Darkness, the first bona fide Gibson-starrer since 2002's execrable Signs, and his Pacific Coast Highway meltdown.

So how do we find the on-screen Gibson in 2010? Does he cut a chastened presence across the cinematic canvas, like some flush-cheeked, scolded schoolboy, his every corporeal fibre vibrating in a crescendo of contrite embarrassment? Well no, not really. In fact the Gibson we are faced with in Edge of Darkness is pretty much the same one we clapped eyes on in the likes of Payback, Ransom and Conspiracy Theory. The hair might be a little greyer and that bit thinner, but this returning Gibson – angry, out for revenge, ready for action – is one who will be immediately recognisable to anyone who caught any of his numerous 90s popcorn thrillers.

Edge of Darkness is based upon the Bafta-festooned 1980s miniseries of the same name, penned by Italian Job screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by Martin Campbell (who, having since made his mark on Hollywood with double-helpings of both Bond and Zorro, now fills the precise same role on this big-screen update). The story commences with Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) arriving in Boston to visit her devoted father Thomas (Gibson). Daughter Craven is in a bad way, vomiting like a proper little Miss Creosote as dad takes her back to his modest abode. Worse is to come, as a masked assailant confronts the two on the front doorstep and shoots Emma dead. The cops quickly identify Thomas, a Boston detective himself, as the actual target of the gunman, and set to work trying to track the killer. But Thomas begins his own investigations into the murder of his daughter, and via her housebound paranoiac boyfriend (Shawn Roberts), a Geiger counter, and the enigmatic Jedburgh (Ray Winstone, underplaying to very good effect), he comes to realise that Emma's job at top-secret, high-tech facility Northmoor was linked to her brutal assassination.

In practice Campbell's movie proves a bit like a ham sandwich, if you were to use Brillo pads instead of bread. The midsection is not too bad at all, as the threads of the central conspiracy plot begin to pull together, Gibson hits his stride and rolls back the years as he gets in deeper and deeper, and we are treated to the most arresting, albeit brief, action sequence in the whole film – which sees Craven facing off against a homicidal motorist who utilises the same modus operandi as Stuntman Mike in Tarantino's Death Proof. In contrast, the first act is a ponderous affair, with too much time expended on tedious scenes of Craven grieving. Sure, we need to know the detective is upset about the death of his daughter. But given that the opening ten minutes of Edge of Darkness are given over to ramming home what a doting dad he is, a modern movie audience is not going to find it too tricky to riddle out that he is going to be pretty darn peeved when she buys the farm.

Still, if the start of Edge of Darkness can be viewed as wobbly then the conclusion is a dipsomaniac having an attack of vertigo while straddling a tightrope stretched out across Cheddar Gorge. The method in which Craven is targeted by Northmoor chief shit Jack Bennett (Danny Huston, playing such a one-note corporate mollusc as to make his X-Men Origins: Wolverine character seem like a figure of Hamlet-esque multi-faceted depth in comparison) is haphazard and illogical, veering from bare acknowledgement of the threat that the former carries to utter fixation on his elimination, and then back to apparent indifference again. The final showdown is by turns laughable and infuriatingly lazy, with Craven being handed closure on his daughter's murder that could not be any more conveniently neat were it to be chopped into bite-sized chunks and spoon-fed down his gullet. And speaking of gullets, the interaction between Craven, Bennett and a pint of radioactive milk nips at the heels of Nic Cage's “Not the bees!” exclamation from The Wicker Man remake in terms of its parodistic value.

This 2010 retread of Edge of Darkness is not simply daft, dull nonsense though; it is also wreathed in hypocrisy. Astonishingly, once again a monster-budget, star-laden Hollywood movie solemnly wags a finger at big-business and a self-appointed, self-important ruling elite as being responsible for all the evil in the world. Now whether you agree with that diagnosis or not, it is a bit much to be given a lecture about it from a film that has cost the better part of $100m, even before distribution and advertising costs are taken into account. Encapsulating this streak of nauseating cant is a latter scene in which Englishman Jedburgh, amidst a meeting of government reptiles, remarks, “I've decided what this country is. Its people deserve better.” How wonderful for the saintly movie millionaires to send this message of solidarity to the little people! Yes, they might seem removed from the real world, in their walled mansions, banking their gargantuan pay cheques, but spiritually they stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches of life. Hooray for Hollywood!

Rating on a scale of 5 pints for Mel Gibson (of radioactive milk): 2
Release Date: Out now
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Screenplay by: William Monahan, Andrew Bovell
Starring: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic
Cert: UK = 15, US = R
Running time: 116 minutes