"Edge of Darkness" is a Boston passion play in which Mel Gibson devours a whole grief pizza loaded with paternal rage and extra cheese, interrogates a bunch of nerve-jangled Chowdahs and finally blows some snarling corporate villains away with his big, loud gun. Like most Gibson films - even the ones he doesn't direct - it's so melodramatic and emotionally lurid that you're either captured by the mood or you sit outside of it, startled by the absurdity.
Mix "Taken" with the cynicism and dark wit of "The Departed" and you have this film; Baby Boomers may like it because all of the twentysomethings in the movie are idiots and pawns - which is roughly where Boomers like twentysomethings to remain - while it champions blarney like righteous vengeance and booze in the afternoon. I appreciated it for the big-eared Senator in a track suit.
Mousy scientist Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic, a cute Serb with bangs) harbors some secret about the shadowy weapons company she interns at; before she can tell her Boston cop dad Thomas (Gibson) about it, a masked gunman pumps a couple barrels into her chest on Tom's doorstep. Cue Gibson staring into space as a sign of rage, and "hey, it's that guy!" Jay O. Sanders showing up as Tom's chummy chief.
Ray Winstone co-stars as a world-weary Somebody Hired By Someone named Jedburgh to follow Craven around while he knocks on the doors of Emma's freaked-out boyfriend and best friend, who employ 20-cent accents and conduct themselves as if they'd just sucked hard on a meth pipe.
Jedburgh smokes cigars and sips champagne lunches on park benches, aristocratic villains (Danny Huston and Damian Young) smell of malfeasance and faint homosexuality, and Gibson stalks around in his moralistic, legalistic manner, invoking, at one point, the crucifixion of Jesus. The meaning of life is frequently discussed by the elders; the lines of dialogue have been shorn like a dog in summer so that you have no earthly clue what Craven and Jedburgh are really talking about. At the end we are essentially told Craven is "saved" for his actions, which, given the events of "Edge of Darkness," is among the most pharisaical interpretations of the gospel I can imagine, right up there with Denzel Washington's body count in "Man On Fire."Get more detail about Edge of Darkness (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy).
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