Mel Gibson returns from his eight year departure from acting to assume the role of Thomas Craven, a grieving police detective in an americanized adaptation of the British mini-series of the same name. Interestingly enough, both the remake and the original, aired in 1986 on BBC, were directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale). The new version tells the same story (albeit a more modernized one) of a veteran cop, whose attempts to track down the man who murdered his daughter uncover an elaborate conspiracy. Sound familiar? It’s because the afflicted-good-cop-gone-badass-vigilante is a tried and true archetype, one that has pleased audiences in countless hollywood films. But does it this time? Like Gibson‘s character, it’s tired, but still kicking.

The greatest compliment I can pay this film is that it learned lessons from its predecessors. Edge of Darkness is an erudite and well-crafted thriller. Countless other films spend too long trying to establish a credible parent-child relationship, only to kill the kid off so the real plot can start moving. In Edge of Darkness, the daughter is assassinated satisfyingly early, and with pleasantly quick resolve, pop heads out to get revenge. This creates time for the movie’s real plot to develop, and turns what would be an insufferable two and a half hour movie down to a manageable 117 minutes. Unfortunately, the original miniseries ran 317 minutes, and although it was trimmed nicely, a lot of the characters seem underdeveloped. Ray Winstone‘s character, for example, seemed less like a CIA goon and more like a Cheshire cat that kept popping up in unexpected places, offering cryptic advice while never fully explaining his angle.

As the driving force behind the film, Mel Gibson‘s character needed to be able to carry the story, and the audience’s captivation, through just about every scene. Thankfully, Gibson demonstrated that he still has leading man capabilities, as his turn as Thomas Craven was a pleasantly original rendition of a stock character. He seemed every bit the kind, loving, and subsequently tormented and vengeful father, that the script called for. His character never came off as superhuman, something that future films could stand to learn from. The film tended to air on the side of conspiracy-uncovering rather than shoot ‘em up, which was refreshing, as it allowed the action sequences to stand out in stark contrast to those containing purely dialogue.

The film marked Bojana Novakovic‘s biggest role to date, as Emma Craven, Thomas’s late daughter. In a film full of people acting in ‘crime-drama mode’, Novakovic gave a refreshingly honest portrayal of a twenty-something with a five-year-old’s endearment for her dad. Her performance, alongside Gibson’s, almost singlehandedly removed the need for exposition — the father-daughter dynamic that they established was so strongly apparent from the beginning, that anything more would have been overkill. And since she was so real, her death actually had gravity, something

which most films aren’t able to achieve with characters developed over ninety minutes.

Ultimately, with revenge-driven plots, a lot of the appeal is in the promise of a final showdown, wherein the justice promised throughout the film will finally be attained. The whole reason we enjoy these movies so much is that we, like the character, are looking for that final moment of catharsis where we can relax knowing that all is once again well with the world. I find that, of this genre, the films which I tend to like more are the ones where the ends justify the means. That is to say, the ending is so compelling that it does indeed justify the hundred-odd minutes it took to get there. I found myself content with the ending in Edge of Darkness – mercy was shown to the people who deserved it, justice was dispatched in the classic ‘eye for an eye’ fashion, and the evil conspiracy was successfully exposed by the media. All in all, Edge of Darkness was as good of a film as the cookie-cutter story allowed it to be.

Seeing a blu-ray disk on a tv capable of high definition was a first for me. But still, the difference in quality was negligible. The only real difference I noticed was that Blu Ray seemed to have more true-to-life shades of black. Quality-wise, I’m sure if I watched them side by side I’d notice a difference, but I’ve honestly never stopped watching a DVD and said, “golly… if only this were higher quality…”

The disk included some special features which I got a chance to take a look at. There were some deleted scenes, one of which was an alternate version of a scene already in the film, only this one was much calmer and didn’t involve a car window being punched through and a chauffeur being knocked out. Good thing they stayed with the original. There was also a section of featurettes, all dealing with aspects of the production and pre-production. All very insightful stuff, though I wish they hadn’t included one called ‘Boston as a character‘, describing how crucial the city of Boston was to the story. It’s nice that they tried make Beantown feel special, but simple copy and pasting could have set the movie in Pittsburg and no one would have been the wiser. Agree with them or not, the featurettes are there, and they give you a nice look at what happened behind the scenes. A director’s commentary would have been nice though, especially since Mr. Campbell directed the original miniseries too, almost 25 years ago. I would have loved to hear his insights on how filmmaking has changed since then.

Movie Grade: B-
DVD Special Features: B+
Overall Grade: B