Edge of Darkness (2010)

Well, you had better decide whether you’re hanging on the cross or banging in the nails.

— Thomas Craven

Edge of Darkness is the first movie Mel Gibson has starred in over eight years, since leaving acting directing foreign language movies, get drunk, going crazy, sugar tits, the whole bit. The movie is compared to Taken, a movie that I enjoyed for great action sequences in a mediocre movie. The comparisons end at the trailer. This is a subdued movie that I didn’t care that much about it.

A veteran homicide detective Thomas Craven (Gibson) waits for her daughter, Emma’s arrival (Bojana Novakovic). She is sick. On the drive to his house, he believes that she is pregnant, but she tells him otherwise. He feels that she is keeping something from him, but she doesn’t want to say. She coughs up blood and they are about to go to the hospital when an assassin blows a hole straight through Emma.

Coping with his daughter’s sudden death, he beings an investigation into who could kill her. There some terrible sequences of Emma’s voice speaking to him and he responds to her or the younger Emma pops up. Urgh! I hate it.

Collecting Emma belonging in her room, her cellphone rings, but the caller hangs up. Searching further in the room, Craven discovers a guns which he traces to her boyfriend, David Burnham (Shawn Roberts). When Craven confronts him, David tries to tell him that he is digging himself into a hole that he can’t get out of.

A mysterious man named Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) approaches Craven to tell him that his daughter was flagged as a national security risk for her role in the knowledge of her employer, Northmoor, manufacturing weapons for foreign countries. She might have been killed for the potentially being a whistle-blower. For the rest of the movie, Craven tries to figure out the players that were instrumental is getting Emma killed and deliver his own brand of justice.

The trailer for this movie made it seems like a non-stop action movie. It was an introspective movie that plotted along slowly. I didn’t understand the motivations of Jedbrugh. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? It was unclear. I thought the ending was laughable.

Judgment: Not the greatest comeback in history. I only recommend this movie for Gibson fans only.

Rating: **1/2

(SPOILER SECTION)

The ending of the movie had me perplexed. When Craven finds out that he is suffering the same symptoms as his daughter he doesn’t go to the doctor. He waits until he is tasered and take prisoner at Northmoor. Why are they doing that when Moore, Senator Pine, Bennett wait for the Thallium to kill him? He easily escapes the faculty to kill Bennett and his bodyguards.