Edge of Darkness

Mel Gibson ends his 8 year hiatus from the big screen with “Edge of Darkness”, a power packed, and somewhat odd, revenge thriller. Mel plays a Boston (which is becoming almost a cliché backdrop for modern cop movies) police detective whose daughter is murdered and he goes almost immediately into “I will stop at nothing to find my daughter‘s killers.” mode, and does his best Terminator impersonation in his quest to find the who and why. With the help of Ray Winstone, as a cooler-than-ice freelance counter-terrorism, ahem, “consultant“, he finds all of those responsible. And by “all of those responsible” I mean all. of. them. Literally. And, to them, they are not nice. Not since The Departed has a cop movie so thoroughly cleaned up its messes. The villains are sketched with a weird, tender finesse and as diabolical containers of absolute evil. In the end, the movie is a bit juvenile in it’s handing out of black and white hats, but I’ll take it.

While it starts out as a fairly standard cop-going-off-the-reservation revenge thriller, the story meanders into interesting places. I much appreciate the effort here to think a little and put a creative spin on the plot, when more often than not in this genre, the plotting feels neglected in favor of performances, directing, etc. And probably the best part are the thrills. There are more leap-out-of-your seat moments than, I imagine, any given horror movie currently at the cineplex.

Mel’s quirky, uncoiling-ferocity acting style has a tendency to feel like a constant overreaction to whatever is taking place around him, and become its own entity separate from the movie…like “Hey, look how mad I can get?” or “Look how sad I can be!” He restrains just enough here, and his style is almost perfectly in tune with the intensity level of the overall tone. The big guy has aged quickly since we last saw him in 2002‘s “Signs“, but a 4-year Colonial-Kurtz-style excursion as a bearded weirdo in the jungles of Mexico will do that.

Bottom line: This is a fun, highly entertaining and somewhat affecting flick.

See it: Worthy of a theatre viewing

4/5 stars