"THE EDGE OF DARKNESS" Modestly Entertaining

[Carl M. Zapffe]

THE EDGE OF DARKNESS ('10) ...  After a five or six year hiatus away from starring in movies, a visibly older Mel Gibson returns as Thomas Craven, a long time homicide detective for the Boston police force. The movie begins by describing Police Detective Thomas Craven as so dedicated to his job that he seems not to have had much time for Emma Craven, his 24 year old daughter and only child. This is in spite of the fact that she lives and works for a high tech firm not far away near the MIT campus. He rushes to invite her home, however, after he receives a troubling telephone call from her. When she arrives, Emma has little to say, and, even more disturbing to her dad, she wretches several times before she even gets into his car.

Gibson offers a yeoman's job in a role that is somewhat more cerebral and less action oriented than those in many of his previous films. The rest of the cast of mostly little known actors likewise offer very credible portrayals of their characters. For example, the heretofore unknown actress Bojana Novakovic is very fine as Craven's daughter. The many other small roles are also well cast. The main delight of this film is provided by English actor Ray Winstone, who portrays Jedburgh, a hired assassin who lives in the shadows while popping pills for his many ailments. With his ailing health in mind, Jedburgh starts to view life in more of a philosophical bent, although none the less lethally. Finally, Danny Huston, who seems to have become typecast as a slimy, smarmy villain, stars as Jack Bennett, the head of a politically connected firm which is raking in millions in secret government contracts, not all of which are legitimate.

Unfortunately, Winstone as Jedburgh would have been even more delightful had I been able to understand half of what he was saying. Most of the time his words were garbled to the point of being unintelligible. Unfortunately, the dialogue of many of the other actors was often equally unintelligible with many trying to murmur what I guess was supposed to have been a faux Boston accent. 

In addition to the poor miking and the incoherent dialogue, the many plot holes are a more troubling problem. I will cover two without giving away the story, since anyone who has seen the previews knows that Emma Craven is gunned down at the very beginning of the movie while she is walking out the door with her dad. She is murdered by unknown assailants firing shotguns from a large black Chevy Suburban parked in front of Craven's house. Emma collapses into a pool of blood and dies as her dad holds her in his arms.  

Now, Thomas Craven is a long time homicide detective, and yet he still jumps to the conclusion, later proven incorrect, that he was supposed to have been the target of the gunfire instead of his daughter. I would have thought that smart detectives didn't rule out any crime scene possibilities until the facts have proven otherwise.

And then in a remarkably bumbling and stunning procedural error, Craven stands in the morgue and he doesn't even think to ask for an autopsy of his daughter's body in spite of the fact that he knew that she was very sick. Worse yet, he has her body cremated, thus destroying possibly incriminating evidence. And these two instances are hardly the end of the plot holes and inconsistencies.

After her death, Craven starts to investigate the circumstances surrounding her murder. This is in spite of the fact that police protocol is not to have homicide detectives investigate murders of people close to them. However, Craven argues persuasively that he is the one who would know best if someone he put away might still be carrying a murderous grudge against him. Valuable time is wasted before he realizes that his daughter had actually been the target. 

His discovery of a pistol in her luggage registered to someone else starts him down the path to her now empty apartment, a formerly unknown boyfriend who turns out to have been the owner of that pistol, and the secretive company that she had worked for. This is a modestly entertaining film if you look past the glaring lapses in logic along with ignoring plot holes big enough to drive a semi through. (B, rent it.)

Carl M. Zapffe,

The Cat's Meow Movie Critic

http://www.catsmeowmoviecritic.com