Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness

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Here's the link to the published review in my column at The Richmond Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3...ge-of-Darkness



Edge of Darkness (2010)

Martin Campbell's "Edge of Darkness" has been rather misleading with its marketing. From the trailers and TV spots, this film is made to look like a revenge thriller along the lines of last year’s surprise hit "Taken." However, that's not what we get with this film. Instead, we get a film that plays out more like a procedural cop film with small elements of a thriller.

The story starts with Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) visiting her father, Tom (Mel Gibson). She is obviously sick when she arrives, but she won't let that stand in the way of seeing her father. As she is about to leave, a mysterious gunman shoots Emma right in the chest, killing her. This starts an investigation into who would do it and why. Tom decides to lead his own investigation into his daughter's murder which involves talking to people like Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a mysterious man who knows what's going on, her boyfriend, and even a senator (Damian Young).

The investigation leads Tom to her place of work, a nuclear research facility headed by Jack Bennett (Danny Huston), who can only tell him that a lot of what they do is classified. Digging deeper, Tom discovers that Emma may have been involved with a group of radical activists bent on bringing the research facility down, but he doesn't know why.

After being mislead by the trailers, I was expecting something a little more than what was offered here. What had made "Taken" work so well was its non-stop action thrill ride that didn't bog the film down too much with a secretive plot. Sure it's not exactly Oscar-caliber cinema, but it worked really well for what it was trying to do.

For "Edge of Darkness," we end up waiting around for most of the film for it to be explained to us, and when we finally get the secret, it's not exactly an incredibly surprising one given what we're told earlier when Tom visits the research facility.

It's strange that, for the most part, Tom seems reserved when it comes to finding the truth behind his daughter's murder. There are several scenes where he's quite calm when investigating. A few scenes do feature him losing it a bit, making us believe that he doesn't really care what happens to him to get to the truth, particularly near the end when he has nothing else to lose. This is actually where "Taken" works really well again. Liam Neeson's character is always a loose cannon throughout the whole film...and his daughter was only kidnapped.

Mel Gibson does a decent job here and the character limitations aren't necessarily his fault. It would have been nice to see him play the character as more of a man-on-a-mission who will stop at nothing and do anything to find his daughter's murderer. Ray Winstone also gives an interesting performance as a man who never really let's on how much he knows.

There is also a problem with the film's pacing. The basic structure of the film has Tom going from point A to point B investigating one thing and then moving on to the next without providing many chances for thrills along the way, making the film play out more like a mystery than the thriller that its advertised as.

This is what turns "Edge of Darkness" into more of a procedural than anything else. There are some interesting scenes here, but not enough to sustain the lagging pace. If you're into those types of shows where it's all investigation like "Law and Order" or "CSI," then you might find something to like in this film. If not, you will probably just end up waiting for the conclusion. 2.5/4 stars.