'Edge of Darkness': Mel Gibson's Wrath Returns For Muddled & Confused Revenge Thriller

Ol’ Mel Gibson can’t get away from that Old Testament justice, can he? The Biblically-inclined action star and Oscar-winning director can be considered a movie star auteur of old-school violence, ever since he grew into his husky, broad-shouldered movie star chops in “The Road Warrior.” As a result, his subsequent films often find him punching, kicking and stabbing his victims on one side of an ongoing philosophical debate before being tied down and tortured for his heroic acts — in his critically acclaimed work, he does not necessarily survive such torture.

And so here he is as grieving Boston father Thomas Craven in “Edge of Darkness,” again staring down pretty intimidating odds without fear, despite the specter, and later the reality, of becoming another in a long line of tied-down and tortured Mel Gibson avatars. The inevitable begins as Craven’s daughter has returned from a lofty internship at local independent contractors Northmoor, where something’s certainly in the water. Not long after a reunion with her widowed father, she begins coughing up fairly grotesque phlegm. Before she is diagnosed, she’s greeted with a furious shotgun blast from an unseen perpetrator. The police department suspect the bullet was meant for her father, but Ol’ Mel Gibson knows better. Or at least eventually he does…

As Thomas begins prying into his daughter’s past life, the film seems determined to analyze the affect she’s had on him, as he mentally pours over memories of her, seeing her in old family videos and even, in a few instances, speaking to her ghost. While this is very standard grieving father material, the film does initially feel thoughtful in how we fail to deal with our own mortality in reaction to the loss of a loved one. But alas, we cannot trouble ourselves with an entire film about an older man learning to re-love his late daughter. What is this, a BBC miniseries? Yes. In fact, it was: “Edge of Darkness” is based on an ’80’s miniseries that won many British television awards, sired by blockbuster director Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale“), who has returned to helm the story again. The source material dealt with our failures to process loss under the guise of analyzing the damaging impact of England’s nuclear policies of the era, a complex balancing act that allowed the series to delve into somewhat science-fiction-y elements.

Campbell’s newer American version, running a little under two hours, has no time for such genre subversion, and it’s all sinewy plot threads and sticky, threadbare character devices. Craven is a homicide detective in his last days with the force, but Gibson’s singular acting choice to convey the character’s broken heart (and mind?) is a slight hunchback. Otherwise, it seems like business as usual for Craven, who doesn’t break a sweat, even though his questioning and badgering of certain suspects found in his daughter’s phone records becomes a trail of bodies. Craven doesn’t think twice before emptying a couple of rounds into those who try to cross him, and as shown early and often, he’s a perfectly capable older man in both hand-to-hand combat and punch-accompanied one-liners. Time behind the camera has obscured the fact that one of America’s biggest action stars has aged gracefully.

Campbell, who began his career as a director of soft-core porn, has reinvented himself as a reliable meat-and-potatoes action guy, so while the script (by Andrew Bovell and Oscar-winner William Monahan) doesn’t have much action, its few scenes of bullets and fisticuffs are models of screen economy and ruthless carnage. Moments allowing expository knowledge are less effective, though the script gives plenty of time for villains to stare with mouths agape as Craven verbally berates and threatens them with a series of snappy quips that an old man in mourning probably couldn’t summon on command.

Campbell also understands stars (and their accompanying postures) all-too-well — had he also directed “The Living Daylights,” Timothy Dalton would still be an A-List star today. As such, the feeling that Gibson’s star has dominated the film is impossible to avoid, considering Craven is fairly bulletproof, never succumbing to one of the biggest threats of the source material, a fate randomly grafted onto another character. Craven pushes Terminator-like through a sea of pawns, and even a few bishops, uncertain as to whether he seeks closure or revenge (but c’mon, we know what the audience wants). Chief amongst these bishops is Northmoor head Danny Huston, who reveals the company’s aims cryptically, punctuating his Sphinx-like dodging of questions with references to classification levels. Would it have surprised you that Huston is playing yet another transparently evil billionaire? Congratulations, this is the movie for you.

The film’s most intriguing character is a mysterious mover and shaker named Jedburgh, played by the tight-faced, barrel-chested Ray Winstone. Jedburgh, who is hired by shady people with shady goals, seems on the surface to be a puppet master, which Craven easily realizes, though it doesn’t become clear until later exactly whose strings he holds. Sadly, Jedburgh’s character traits don’t seem to have made it into the shooting draft of the script, and his key scenes with Craven only make both veteran actors seem sleepy and disinterested. In his final scene, the interloper reveals his moral alliances, suddenly passing judgment on a number of the preceding events, and as the only Brit in the film (which takes place in a very Irish American Boston), the leftfield moment almost seems as if the Kiwi/British Campbell is directly passing judgement on the American military industrial complex, as if his action spectacular (which, it’s worth noting, has some Fangoria-level scenes of bloodletting) hasn’t been clear enough.

Campbell, who’s got a cushy gig coming up as director of “Green Lantern,” doesn’t seem to know what type of movie he’s making, going from serious political thriller to ultraviolent exploitation picture and back without regard for consistency of tone. The action sequences are usually accompanied by an admittedly amateurish surprise-blast that offers a loud, ugly segue way from a quieter scene, the action-movie equivalent of the cat jumping out in a horror movie. Dramatic moments flounder in a different way, as if Campbell is doing stupid-pretending-to-be-smart, allowing for monotony to settle in after the fifth or so scene of people standing around and discussing matters — does Campbell simply need guns to shoot a genuinely visually dynamic sequence? Worse still, the third act stinks of reshoots, and the denouement is straight out of the Mel Gibson playbook, an orgy of death that could only please the most emotionally bankrupt of those invested in this story. Mel devotees will have a good time, but the rest of us should find a more socially acceptable way to curb our bloodlust. [D+]