Edge of Darkness

Overview

Mad Mel is back. After seven years off screen, he's stepped in front of the camera and into very familiar shoes, once again playing a police detective driven to the brink. Based on the 1985, critically acclaimed BBC miniseries, director Martin Campbell has returned to helm the feature film after screenwriters Andrew Bovell (Lantana) and William Monahan (The Departed) moved the action from Leeds to Boston.

After his darling daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down in front of him, single father and staunch Catholic Thomas Craven (Gibson) desperately hunts down every lead, even as they take him further outside the bounds of the law. Doing a deal with the devil (in the guise of shady gun-for-hire Jedburg (Ray Winstone), Craven soon finds himself in front of a pathological corporate figurehead (Danny Huston) and in the cross hairs of a nuclear conspiracy.

While the premise intrigues and the performances are strong, Edge of Darkness ends up being decidedly less than the sum of its parts. It's as if more than just the British accents were lost in translation, as the six-part mini-series fails to resonate within the film's 116 minute running time. Plot holes and odd pacing do little to drive action or interest to the promised edge, and although it's good to see Mel again, audiences would definitely do better venturing back to the 80s, with the original series, and a couple of Lethal Weapons thrown in for good measure.