Edge Of Darkness

Director Martin Campbell, who rejuvenated the James Bond franchise not once but twice (with 1995's GoldenEye and then Casino Royale in 2006), has here done the same for Mel Gibson’s on screen persona. Strictly speaking Gibson is not here playing anyone he has done before, but that is a technicality.

Thomas Craven (Gibson) is a detective whose nuclear scientist daughter is murdered in a grizzly and apparently motive-free drive by shooting. Craven’s only grief response, beyond a brief descent into catatonia and ongoing hallucinations that don’t trouble him, is to fixate entirely on uncovering the truth of his daughter’s death. As we might expect from a grieving father, Craven feels he is the only person to have experienced this significant loss; what is rather more adolescent is the way the audience is encouraged to indulge in the same conceit.

A revenge narrative is followed to a gruesome conclusion in which we are invited to do nothing less than revel shamelessly. Craven has now been given licence and power (the weird strength of the Hollywood hard-done-by) to do anything he wants, not only in the name of this compelling truth, but also to achieve an unsavoury justice. The evil behaviour of the nuclear firm that his daughter worked for, which increasingly resembles the culprit, contributes to this mandate. Not only does it wreak violence on whistleblowers (permission for it to be roundly humiliated and economically damaged), it is also murkily linked to the sale of weapons to terror groups, and does so with the collusion of a Massachusetts senator (permission for just about anything else).

Gravelly voiced Mel Gibson brings a winning sentimentality to his bereaved-cop-in-hot-pursuit. In a weird twist, he is aided by a no less gravelly voiced Ray Winstone, a political fixer who helpfully presents us with whichever facts the plot cannot otherwise convey. He and Craven are united by some instinct or bond that seems to override any initial mistrust and most definitely cuts through the double speak of the creeps in charge. Perhaps it is this, or perhaps it is their gravelly voices.

A story of the inner workings of US power and the depraved violence that sustains it, Edge Of Darkness is interesting in that it comes close to being a critique. At one point Craven says he is the guy “with nothing to lose”; he has become radically free, an agent capable of getting beyond the blackmail and constant threat of violence exercised by the state apparatus. However unlike, say, Syriana, a film with similar concerns, Edge Of Darkness has already made your mind up for you about a number of things; not least the redeeming power of familial ties. When Craven finally dies in a way that references the poisoning of Litvinenko, he is united with his daughter in a schmaltzy nirvana that resembles the paradise of the suicide bomber - another non state actor compelled to achieve ideals by violence.

Thus Hollywood’s ideological position is mapped out further, and the result is the surprising promotion of values that resemble the jihadist more closely than we might have expected.



Released in UK cinemas on 29th January 2010 by Icon Film Distribution.

Written by Huw Green.