REVIEW: Edge of Darkness (2010) ONE STAR

Edge of Darkness

Rated: R

Starring: Mel Gibson

Runtime: 117 minutes

My Raiting: 1 star.

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Thomas Craven's (Mel Gibson) daughter is killed on his front porch five minutes into the movie.

It's a good opening and showed tremendous promise.

By the end of the film, you're wishing his daughter hadn't been killed. Not because you miss her. Craven has constant flashbacks to remind us of his supposed pain. And not because she was a particularly good person, either. She was involved with a plethora of questionable people who Craven seems to conclude “must be good” or his daughter wouldn't associate with them. You wish she lived because you know that there wouldn't be this movie if she had, and that is a far better scenario than anything Edge of Darkness has to offer.

Director Martin Campbell fails to really explore the subject of this film just as he missed with Taken. This, too, is another lackluster angry-dad-seeks-vengeance film.

Edge of Darkness, however, has no hope of becoming a surprise box office hit. It's missing a car chase and lots of shoot-'em-up moments to trick you into thinking it's good.

Edge of Darkness is a bore – a laughable one, at that. It is a painfully ordinary rogue cop vs. the corporation film that tries to be smarter than it is.

In the film's final act, a character says “… it's so convoluted that everyone can have theories and no one has a fact that isn't contradicted by another.” In other words, let's try to make a Reservoir Dogs meets The Departed without Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese. When we confuse ourselves, we'll go ahead and have someone say this to fool the audience into thinking there's more to this movie than a pile of… well… I've said too much.

Not only is Edge of Darkness bad, but its plot rudimentary and its twists telegraphed. Several characters, including the two-timing hit man, are worthless and replaceable. The ensemble cast lacks any chemistry and Gibson is forced to try salvaging this mess with passionate emotion over his daughter's death.

At least that's what you'd think he would try to do.

Instead, he goes about the film stiff and concentrating more on his Boston accent than the rest of his acting. He dismisses various people seeking to help him and wishes only to go about finding his daughter's killers alone.

He makes some headway, albeit painstakingly, when he discovers her involvement with underground environmental activists who are trying to take down a corporation believed to work with nuclear weapons.

Everyone wants everyone else dead and it's a two-hour “who's gun is the biggest” stand-off to a not-so-well disguised surprise at the end.

Edge of Darkness is pointless, mindless and another reason why Gibson should stay behind the camera where he at least still has some idea of what he should be doing. But even there, his star is fading.