Cinema Summaries: Edge of Darkness

Oh Mel Gibson! My mind tells me to give you one star, but my testosterone wants to give you five. “Edge of Darkness” is the most Mel Gibsony film Mel Gibson has ever done, and I love it! I love how he plays the exact same character in every movie he ever does. I love how he, like Zoolander, has only one look (vengeful, wild stare). I love how all his movies are a compilation of every other film he’s ever starred in, like how he grieves a lost child (like Ransom) and finds out about a whole gang of conniving conspirators (like conspiracy theory) and then plays the role of a lone man fighting the system (like Braveheart). And most of all I love how he ditches that entire “narrative arc” crap to give him more time to pile the bodies

All sarcasm aside the movie wasn’t completely horrible, if not incredibly predictable for all the aforementioned reasons. It’s actually sort of comedic in the way Gibson inadvertently satires himself.

Gibson stars as the police detective Thomas Craven. His daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) becomes incredibly ill when she visits him, bleeding from the nose and vomiting. As they walk out the door someone shoots Emma, seemingly targeting Thomas. She tries to lean in and tell her dad something important, but her voice is stifled as her eyes roll back and close. While it seems obvious that the target was Thomas (I guess police detectives have a knack for attracting the wrong sort of enemies), he isn’t convinced, and heads out on death wish journey to punish those responsible.

The Director, Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”) delivers a performance as consistently predictable as Mel Gibson’s. The only difference is that Campbell has no style. His contributions to the film are bloody, gothic violence scenes that only surpass their pointlessness with abject vulgarity. He cuts the fibers that allow Craven to be portrayed with sympathy, leaving him as nothing but a vengeful BA.

The plot is full of holes that cast one far past the edge of realism, and the dialogue is strewn with over-the-top one-liners like, “you’re either being crucified, or pounding in the nails.” While film lacks originality and prose, its grasp of the emotions connected to a lost child, and the revenge that eventually conquers the mourning, is able to invoke the same feelings its more sophisticated twin, “Man on Fire,” was able to produce.

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