MOVIE REVIEW: EDGE OF DARKNESS

EDGE OF DARKNESS

Five of Seven Cows

Mel Gibson used to be a big deal and with good reason. He is an actor capable of the full range of male roles: Unhinged-but-loveable cop, post-apocalyptic warrior, medieval warrior, Vietnam-era warrior, or raging anti-Semitic drunk. Of course, it was the last role that nearly did in his career, mostly because it was one he played in real life. It’s almost certainly a testament to his big-dealness that his career survived that little performance at all. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether that is a good thing.

             

Gibson’s latest movie, Edge of Darkness neither vindicates nor damns him. A strictly by-the-numbers sort of thriller in which Gibson plays a cop out to avenge the murder of his daughter, it is more entertaining than it has any right to be. As was shown in the similar Taken starring Liam Neeson, there’s nothing quite so much fun as watching a tough guy avenge his little girl. This is the sort of role Gibson was born to play.

             

While Edge of Darkness isn’t as predictable as one might expect, it seems very self-consciously unpredictable. It’s not that you don’t know how it will end, but the film’s makers throw enough surprises and twists in to keep you from snoozing before all the bad guys go splat. Many of the plot’s devices are clichéd and shopworn – evil American arms manufacturers that will stop at nothing in their greed, blah blah blah – but nobody expects an action movie to break new ground.

             

There are some things that I can’t help but notice, and then having noticed cannot help but comment upon. It seems there is a more certain path to becoming a Republican senator from Massachusetts than the one that Scott Brown took a couple weeks back. The easiest way for a Republican to gain a senate seat in this bluest-of-blue states is to appear in a movie in which one of the state’s senators is corrupt. Funny how evil politicians end up with an (R) by their name. I’m just saying.

             

Edge of Darkness has all the violence and language you would expect from a movie of this type, but there’s no nudity so while mommy might want to keep the kiddies at home she can presumably allow hubby to go. Whether or not this is the movie to resurrect Gibson’s career, or even if that career indeed needed resurrecting, is an open question. Either way, it’s not a bad way to spend an afternoon. I give it five cows.