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I know this would be the cheesy and typical tag line to use, but I can't help myself....."Edge of Darkness had me on the edge of my seat!"...... Ok, I feel better with that out of my system.

 

The Players: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, and Bojana Novakovic

 

The Director: Martin Campbell

The Gist: Thomas Craven (Gibson) is a homicide detective in the Boston Police Department.  As they are walking out his front door, a masked gunman takes a shot and kills his daughter, Emma (Novakovic).  At first Craven believes the shot to have been meant for him, but as he investigates he finds that his daughter may have been the intended target after all and that she may have been holding secrets that got her killed.  Now Craven must find his daughter's killer, and uncover the plot that got her killed.

Review of Darkness:

Well the first thing I've got to say is that I'm so excited to see Mel Gibson back in front of the camera rather than behind it.  Say what you want about him, about his little run in with the law a few years back, or about his religious and political opinions, but he's always been one of my favorite actors and for good reason.  There are few actors I can point to that have the range and intensity that Gibson has, and it definitely shows in this movie.

  

Gibson brings his trademark scowl back to theaters

This movie doesn't waste any time getting started.  You barely get to meet Emma Craven before she's brutally shot and killed.  The amount of blood spewing out of her body and onto the floor lets you know that you're in for a bloody ride for the rest of the film.  

Gibson really makes you feel his pain.  Not through sobs of blubbering emotion, not from constantly talking about his grief throughout the movie---all it takes is the look in his eyes for you to know that he's a grieving man with nothing to lose.  He doesn't take a whole lot of time to grieve before heading out for revenge, and it's believable because thats the type of person his character is.  He's not overly sentimental.  He's a man of action.  

The movie's plot is actually a two hour condensed version of a mini series that ran on BBC.  I'm not sure how it measures up, but I'm now interested to see it because I would like to see more of these characters and how well the film follows the series.  All in all I think the movie does a fine job of giving us a good mixture of action, mystery, and suspense without having a plot that's too contrived and hard to follow.

 

"Knock Knock" ...."Who's There?"......"A Lethal Weapon who has a Braveheart and knows What Women Want..........MAD MAX!"

The rest of the cast is rounded out by Ray Winstone as a corporate hit man who, due to reasons of his own, feeds Craven information and helps him behind the scenes, and Danny Huston who plays the scum bag director of the nuclear facility that Emma Craven works at.

Winstone does a good job of being mysterious and dangerous while also making you want to trust him.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with him because I figured there had to be something more to his reasons for helping Craven.  There is, and the answers weren't really what I was expecting, which was good.   

I've only seen Danny Huston in a handful of films, but in everything I've seen him in so far he's played a really bad guy.  Most notably in "30 Days of Night" in which he played the head vampire, and was pretty terrifying, and also in "X-Men Origins:Wolverine" where he plays the villainous Commander Stryker, who's also a really evil dude.  There's no difference here.  He really makes you hate him in this film.  I'd say that he better be careful before he becomes type cast as "that guy you get to play a good sleezeball." 

 

"I'm dark and mysterious so I'm obliged to have all of my secret meetings in this parking garage."

I really did enjoy this movie.  It was a good film, and brought back good old Mel from an 8-year acting hiatus.  The last starring role the guy had was 2002's "Signs" so it's nice to see him back, and in a good movie this time around.  And the tag line at the beginning of this article was just for laughs, I really was kept in suspense by this movie.

Catch It, Rent It, Skip It?

I wouldn't say that it's so good that you have to go out and pay ten bucks to see it in the theater right now, but I will say that it's most definitely worth the rental.