I was so fired up for Mel Gibson’s comeback. Public meltdowns aside, I have a soft spot for the actor, as he has played some of the most iconic roles in the action genre to date including: Mad Max, Martin Riggs, and William Wallace, to name a few (am I going to get totally panned for saying I also have a soft spot for
Rick Jarmin, his character in Bird on a Wire with Goldie Hawn?? Come on, when it’s on television, you know you tune in. Right? Right?). So when the trailer for Edge of Darkness came out, I was pumped and looked forward to the film for the past couple months.

After all, Mel hasn’t been on the silver screen since his solid and sympathetic turn in M. Night Shyamalan’s last great film, Signs. He did, of course, make two turns of directorial brilliance in The Passion of the Christ and Aplocalypto (both are must-sees, though I rate the latter higher for its innovation and direction). And then he had his brushes with the law that made headlines.

After the great work he did in the past ten years in front of and behind the camera, I am genuinely surprised he thought that this film was the one to make his return. The film is a political thriller about a nuclear research plant and the implementation of illegal weapons. It sets up the U. S. as the villain without touching upon the current state of nuclear development across the world. I’m pretty tired of this common and cliché point of view that so many films take nowadays.

The film is simply boring and by the numbers. Mel plays Thomas Craven whose daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), comes home for a break from her work at the aforementioned plant. She is sick and keep throwing up and when she is about to tell her father, a Boston cop, what is going on, they open the door to  leave for the hospital, and she is shot dead. The writers use the red herring of leading us to believe that the assassin was gunning for Mel’s character, but we know that there is a lot more to this and now we are led down the path of Craven’s investigation.

What follows is trite action sequences, boring dialogue, and over the top acting. Damian Young is just too much as the Republican Senator Jim Pine, who is trying to cover up the nuclear research company’s actions. The inaccuracy of this aspect of the story is startling. Not until after this movie was written (based off of a BBC miniseries from 1985) was the first Republican senator elected in over 30 years to said state? Me thinks this is trying a little too hard to be overly political.

Politics aside, this film tries to take us in the territory that Liam Neeson’s Taken did a year ago. That film did what this film tries to do much better. The action was tighter, and script more coherent (albeit much more simple) and the characters more sympathetic and interesting. One thing that does surprise me about this movie is that it was directed by Martin Campbell, the man who gave us the brilliant remake of Casino Royale with the best action sequences in years.

Here he fails, and lets us down. And the bigger shame is that he lets Mel down, too.

(Word is that Mel is gearing up to star in Under and Alone, a film based and the true account of an ATF agent that infiltrated the Mongol Nation motorcycle gang. Now THAT would have been the comeback we have been waiting for).

Filed under: Action, Bad Ass Leading Men, silver screen by admin