Edge Of Darkness" is not a very good movie.Now I could just leave it at that, end this post, and go back to playing "Mass Effect 2", but I feel like rambling. So here I go.
In my previous review for "A Single Man", I mentioned that I'm a Mel Gibson fan. I'm not sure how Mel Gibson popped up in a discussion about "A Single Man", but it happened.
He's been out of the acting game since 2002, when he starred in M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs", a really good alien invasion thriller that shoots itself in the face in its final moments.
After M. Night drove him into the wilderness, Mel decided to go back to directing. We all know what happened next. He seems to enjoy challenging himself with projects that involve all actors speaking in dead languages, from Aramaic and Latin with "The Passion", to the discarded Mayan dialect in "Apocalypto".
Mel has said that he intends to make a Viking epic next, with all of the actors speaking in period-correct Olde Norse and Olde English. I am all for this. We need more crazy directors making odd films in dead languages. With graphic violence.
What we don't need is Mel Gibson acting in films like "Edge Of Darkness".
The film is based on a 1985 BBC mini-series, written by Troy Kennedy Martin, and directed by Martin Campbell. But this movie is not even in spitting distance of the mini-series.
Both stories follow a cop named Thomas Craven in his search to find the bastard who destroyed his daughter with a shotgun while they shared a tender moment on his front porch. They both involve nuclear conspiracies tied to some shady corporation called "Northmoor". And Craven is aided in his quest by a connected stranger named Jedburgh in both versions.
But what separates the 2010 film and the 1985 mini-series is a truck-load of crazy.
Largely inspired by something called "The Gaia Hypothesis" (Google it), Troy Kennedy Martin infused his story with references to the planet's self-correcting nature, implying in his script that the world had deemed the human race a threat, and that counter-measures were being prepared against our meddling species, illustrated at the end by a patch of black flowers.
Sure, there's a plutonium conspiracy, but that's not really what most of the folks who watched the mini-series remember. They remember the vengeful planet, and the numerous references to incest, regarding the relationship between Craven and his daughter.
You don't even have to read between the lines for the incest stuff. It's right there, in the meat of the story.
There's the scene where the ghost of his daughter seemingly taunts Craven by telling him how wonderful her boyfriend was in the sack,and a dream sequence with his daughter dressed up as a sexy nurse.
Then there's the moment that made me cock my head in disbelief: soon after Craven's daughter is gunned down, he is looking through his daughter's things, and he discovers her vibrator. He looks at it longingly, then he kisses it. He kisses her vibrator. Thomas Craven kisses his dead daughter's vibrator.
I can't believe I just typed that sentence.
Of course, none of that crazy shit is in the Warner Bros. movie.
Instead, we're treated to two hours of Mel Gibson wandering around, being told everything he needs to know without any real detective work, shooting a couple guys, forcing Danny Houston to drink irradiated milk before shooting him in the neck, and then dying of radiation poisoning before walking into Heaven, hand-in-hand, with his daughter's ghost.
Ugh.
This movie hardly does anything right. Gibson finds out his daughter was working at Northmoor, a "green" company with a shady, classified secret operation. Turns out Northmoor is manufacturing nuclear weapons with fissile material from other countries for the U.S. government.
See, if these nukes are ever detonated here or abroad, they could not be traced back to the United States. Instead the radioactive material in the weapons would point to "rogue nations", giving whoever is in charge the excuse to blow up their enemies with impunity.
Although Craven's daughter Emma worked for Northmoor, she was working with an activist group to find evidence of this conspiracy and leak it to the public. In the mini-series, the activist group was called "Gaia", and in the movie they changed the name to...
Shit, I don't remember. "Nightbird", maybe?
I must admit, I was so bored by the film, that I didn't really give a shit about anything that was happening onscreen. My mind began to wander around the thirty minute mark.
It's just so fucking boring.
Craven finds out that his daughter was already dying of radiation poisoning when she was shotgunned in the everywhere by the Northmoor triggerman, and she had a handy Geiger counter in her personal effects. He uses this Geiger counter later in the film to find out that his delicious organic milk is practically glowing in the dark. But apparently it's too late for this knowledge to help him, because I guess he already drank some of it.
If my daughter were mysteriously irradiated, and I found a Geiger counter in her overnight bag, I would scan every fucking thing I owned with the damn thing. Every fucking day. I would get Harry Caul at the end of "The Conversation" paranoid with that fucking Geiger counter.
Not Thomas Craven, though. You know he's sick earlier when he coughs. You know... "the cough". That cough that people develop in movies, and someone asks the coughing person if they're all right, and they respond "I'm fine". Fit that bastard for a backless blazer because he's a dead man walking.
Craven starts coughing, even though he's in good health. So obviously, he's gonna die. I'm surprised they didn't include a scene where he's combing his hair and realizes that it's all falling out. Maybe they left that one on the cutting room floor.
Craven realizes the depth of this conspiracy when he finds out that Emma contacted a U.S. Senator for help. Unfortunately, the Senator is in Northmoor's pocket, so Emma became a target of the evil conspirators.
He doesn't really find any of this out, the mysterious "consultant" Jedburgh tells him this. He just shows up at Craven's house and tells him this shit. There's no detective work going on here. People just tell Craven what's going on. It's kind if insulting.
Jedburgh, by the way, is played by Ray Winstone. This guy was awesome in "Sexy Beast". He was awesome in "The Proposition". He was awesome in "Beowulf". He sucked balls in "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull". Of course, everyone sucked balls in that movie.
In "Edge Of Darkness", he's okay. He's not really in the movie that much.
He shows up at the beginning, says a few things, shows up in Craven's backyard and says a few things, drinks some wine and says a few things, then shoots the Senator and his Northmoor cronies before getting gunned down by a pubescent cop after he lowers his gun.
It's pretty anti-climactic.
In the mini-series, Jedburgh is played by Joe Don Fucking Baker, and he actually does stuff. He irradiates one of the central villains with some plutonium before going down in a hail of bullets in true badass fashion. This is another case of somebody stepping into the shoes of Joe Don Baker and failing miserably.
But I don't hold it against Winstone. I hold it against the "creative minds" reponsible for this waste of celluloid.
Pray for the unlucky soul who is cast in a remake of "Mitchell".
The evil Senator is played by Damian Young, by the way. You know, Bus Driver Stu Benedict from "The Adventures of Pete and Pete". That show was a huge part of my childhood. And it still holds up admirably well today.
Stu Benedict and his unstable personality amused and disturbed me as a young boy. Watch the episode "Yellow Fever", and see poor Bus Driver Stu Benedict slowly descend into madness as he gets his bus lost while on a field trip.
That scarecrow had it coming, if you ask me.
Hell, do yourself a favor and watch any episode of "The Adventures Of Pete and Pete". And don't watch this movie. Just stay home and watch "Field of Pete". You'll thank yourself.
Don't get me wrong, it was nice seeing Damian Young in a big Hollywood movie, and he did a fine job with a shit role, but it's just not worth it in the end.
I believe Mel Gibson tells United States Senator Stu Benedict that he is going to "throw a box of tarantulas" on his situation at one point in the film.
That line made me laugh like an insane person for a few minutes. It just doesn't make any sense. I have never heard anyone in the history of ever threaten to throw a box of tarantulas on anybody's situation.
It was great, because it was so bizarre. But it was one moment in an otherwise mediocre film.
Don't you dare see this movie. The original mini-series is available on DVD in the United States. Buy it. Rent it. Bittorrent it. I don't give a damn. Just watch the out-of-its-mind story unfold. It is definitely worth your time.
But stay far away from this movie. Shame on Mel Gibson for returning to acting with this garbage. And shame on Martin Campbell for directing this ill-advised "remake" of his own amazing work.
And shame on me for watching it.
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