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An average movie

Posted : 12 years, 9 months ago on 14 June 2011 07:37

For a while , Mel Gibson had become actually more famous for his anti-social behavior than for his acting qualities. However, in my opinion, the guy was still an interesting actor so I was quite curious to see his comeback (indeed, he would give in this movie his 1st lead part in almost a decade). I mean, sure, it was a rather standard conspiracy based thriller but even though the whole thing was nothing really ground-breaking, I thought that the end result was not so bad at all. Basically, the weakest point was the story as they tried to keep it mysterious but, eventually, it was actually rather confusing in my opinion. Still, the directing was decent enough and there were a couple of nice action scenes with some rather dramatic conclusions. At the end of the day, the best aspect of the movie was actually Mel Gibson himself. Sure, he gave here a rather standard action hero performance but, in my opinion, he still managed to add some sensitivity to this performance and that’s somethine that only a few action stars are actually able to pull off. To conclude, even though it was not a masterpiece whatsoever, I thought it was still a decent action flick and I think it is still worth a look especially if you are interested in Mel Gibson’s work. 



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Movie of the year, A wild ride

Posted : 13 years, 7 months ago on 24 August 2010 06:44

Edge of Darkness Stars the recently controversial Mel Gibson as Tom Craven; a Boston detective who has lost his daughter Emma (Bojana Noakovic)to a mysterious shooting outside of his home. Not much is known about her death but as Tom starts to investigate things about his daughter, he soon finds that she worked for Northmoor. A nuclear weapons facility that works under the order of the president to build raw materials and assemble them once the order has been given. what Tom soon finds is a conspiracy theory that should make you shudder when you think about it. However, along the way we meet Jedburgh (Ray Winstone in possibly the performance of his career) who is hired to look into Northmoor by senator Jim Pine (Damien Young). Edge of Darkness is a suspenseful thriller that makes you think , but what makes the movie great is the relationship between Craven and Jedburgh. This film is beautiful to look at as well thanks to cinematographer Phil Meheux and director Martin Campbell(Casino Royale), I wouldn't miss this.


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Edge of Darkness review

Posted : 13 years, 9 months ago on 8 June 2010 07:04

somewhat predictable, but entertaining nonetheless


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Edge of Darkness review

Posted : 13 years, 10 months ago on 16 May 2010 01:26

it is not as good as Taken. and mel gibson is not bad ass as Liam Neeson.
but it's a good revenge story.


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Nothing to lose...apart from the audience.

Posted : 14 years, 1 month ago on 25 February 2010 11:48

''I'm a guy with nothin to lose!''

As homicide detective Thomas Craven investigates the death of his activist daughter, he uncovers not only her secret life, but a corporate cover-up and government collusion that attracts an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence.

Mel Gibson: Thomas Craven

The director of GoldenEye and Casino Royale. Directed by
Martin Campbell, William Monahan and Andrew Bovell worked on the screenplay,
taking the screenplay from Mou gaan dou(Infernal Affairs) and adapting it to The Departed. With all of this talent it's safe to assume a competent job, but the title is such an obvious prelude to a slog of a journey.



While visiting her father, Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) is shot. As the only witness and one of Boston's finest, Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) goes to work as the daddy of revenge. Meanwhile, the culprits enlist the help of the mysterious Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) to keep the damaged Tom from unraveling the grander scheme. The result: the requisite game of cat and mouse, which almost doubles as the James Bond script Mel Gibson was never offered.

It's good to find a story that has carnage and mayhem that doesn't seem to be implemented with an iron CGI fist. Edge of Darkness can be thrilling at times but it's so slow. When it comes to gun violence or vehicular homicide, director Martin Campbell takes it into more thinking and conspiracy and Boston accents that make you want subtitles.
The roles in the film opt for believability from us; We are supposed to believe that Tom Craven is a veteran detective. I don't know how he could have solved anything to earn his tenure when on this case we see him stumble randomly into clues. Shaft or Chinatown Jack he is not. The most obvious clue is in his face for so long that he's either lost focus or Campbell wants the audience to do the same.

To its credit, Edge of Darkness does mix together some grand segments. What felt like a laughable ode to Star Wars gains a much-needed explanation later in the film. Ray Winstone is the scene-stealer, though there were plenty of times where his script must had told him to speak inaudibly. Every instance involving a moving car is golden.
Unfortunately, thrillers need twists and Edge of Darkness gives no surprises to it's own adoration. We know early on that Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) is going to lose his daughter. The only way that would come as a surprise to you is if you avoided every detail.
The story has been around far too long and it gets retold each year. Edge of Darkness is mostly enjoyable because it works the angle of tried and tested film; it has around 30 years of R&D going for it. What a great shame that new ideas can go through the pipeline so seldom these days.


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Slow Paced Thriller

Posted : 14 years, 1 month ago on 13 February 2010 11:01

After his Daughter is murdered outside his home detective Thomas Craven goes on a hunt to find her killer, at first suspecting that he was the target and not her, it doesn’t take him long to figure out otherwise, and he begins to look into her life, her job and the people she was hanging out with.

The whole who is the target plot got really old, it was clear right away that she was the target and it had something to do with her job. You could easily figure out that she had something wrong and she didn’t want to tell her father. It was poorly executed and I was hoping that they would be a little more intelligent about this aspect. But like most films these days it was disappointing, before she even had time to explain, she began puking and bleeding and flipped out randomly and asked her father to take her to the hospital. Then she is shot out front of the house, and you know right away when they only yelled “Craven” who the target was. The name Craven was yelled so that we the audience would believe that someone was out to get detective Thomas Craven, but the mistake they made was having the daughter bleeding and puking and freaking out like something was horribly wrong. The smart way would have been to have her come like nothing was wrong, then have her get shot and then we find out about what she was involved in. But these filmmakers always assume their audiences are stupid, so they need to add little things that make it clearer. Give credit allow the audience to be surprised by one of these plots sometime, don’t just spell it all out, leave something’s up in the air.

Also the acting was good to a point. I am never really a fan of take matters into your own hands type characters, because they always seem to get out things that bail them out of certain death situations, and Thomas Craven is the same old same old resourceful cop that is featured in everyone of these modern day conspiracy theory films. Where I found Mel Gibson was the same as he always is, over the top I really liked Ray Winstone, a man we know little about, yet he seems to be trying to help out his mysterious ways, and as the film progresses we learn more about his methods and why he does what he does. His performance was spectacular because he was the one character that had the answers to the questions that were never answered throughout the film, and close to the end of the film we learn that he knew everything we wanted to know the whole time.

Even through all the questions and all the non answers we seemed to be receiving through out the film, the worst part of the film was the look about Northmoor, it was the clichéd eerie looking cliff nuclear energy plant, that had this fake air about it, why is it that all powerplant seem to run off in the ocean, and why do all these thrillers have a sequence where the badass guy is looking down about the city like he rules the world. Places like this don’t look that nice, it looked more like a hillside home built with mega security walls.


In the end it remains just your average run of the mill slow paced thriller with explosive bits of action that are off the handle, like shooting a guy in the head while driving at 50 or 60 miles an hour. There was supposed to be some hidden message deep inside that was supposed to make us think that we should stand up to things we don’t think are right, but the only thing I learned is that if I stand up to the wrong people they will kill me and get away with it, also that the government lies and supports illegal activities, like we all didn’t already know that. An attempt to be clever, fails. Saved by Mel Gibson’s decent return to acting and Ray Winstones mysterious portrayal as well as the revenge, one can surely relate to that.


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Enjoyable, but far too meandering and drawn-out

Posted : 14 years, 1 month ago on 10 February 2010 12:49

"Well you had better decide whether you're hanging on the cross, or banging in the nails."


For the first time in eight years, Mel Gibson has stepped back in front of the camera with this adaptation of the 1985 British mini-series Edge of Darkness. Penned by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell, the film unsurprisingly truncates and simplifies the six-episode mini-series; keeping the basic premise of the small screen original but concentrating more on Gibson's brand of primal rage. While the trailers and general marketing implied the film to be akin to Taken, Edge of Darkness is a far more sedate and verbose type of thriller; serving up scenes of heavy exposition occasionally punctuated by instances of shocking violence.



The narrative of the mini-series is transposed from England to Boston, where we're introduced to lonely veteran police detective Tom Craven (Gibson). Tom is delighted when his beloved daughter Emma (Novakovic) arrives for a visit, yet this delight soon turns to horror when a hooded gunman arrives on his door-step and blows a hole through Emma's chest. While common wisdom would indicate Tom was the real mark but his daughter was caught in the crossfire, the bereaving father suspects otherwise. This incident launches Tom on a single-minded mission to uncover the truth behind his daughter's murder.


Viewers expecting an adrenaline rush from Edge of Darkness will to be disappointed. There are bursts of enthralling action, sure, but they're surrounded by long, tedious periods where not a great deal actually happens. Slow expository scenes to set up deeper aspects of the story are certainly necessary, as well as time alone with Tom as he laments over the loss of his daughter, but they're not taut enough. Too often, scenes reach their logical conclusion only for it to continue dragging on and on, to the point that even the actors seem to be wondering why they are still there. In addition to this, the film is overstuffed with characters and locations. The premise becomes far too unnecessarily complicated and drawn-out, which is especially troublesome because there aren't enough twists to justify the long runtime. Worse, once the ending is at long last reached, it all feels far too simplified and rushed; as if the writers reached a certain point, realised the script was running too long, and searched for the easiest solution. The enterprise is further marred by the lack of truly complex characters - the motivations of Jedburgh (Winstone) are unclear, reducing the role to a deus ex machina. Tom Craven is believably depicted, but he too regularly imagines his daughter is still there with him. While cute at first, it fast becomes cheesy.



Midway through the movie, when Craven decides he will no longer take crap off anybody, we get glimpses of what Edge of Darkness could have been. For all his time off, Gibson can still kick ass with the best of them. There are a number of death-dealing moments here, including an exhilarating blood-drenched climax and a few nifty stunts. These serve as a decent pay-off for a movie that has meandered far too much. Thankfully, the material is moderately well handled by director Martin Campbell. Interestingly, the man got his big break helming the BBC mini-series on which this film is based, and then proceeded to direct such movies as GoldenEye, Casino Royale, and the two Zorro films. Campbell has tackled this material with a minimum of fussiness; primarily relying on Mel Gibson's screen presence and the raw intensity of the story.


For Mel Gibson, Edge of Darkness represents something of a comeback. The last picture he headlined was 2002's Signs - eight years ago, when he was among Hollywood's elite. Since Signs, Mel concentrated on directing movies rather than starring in them. Having stayed out of the spotlight for almost four years (Apocalypto was the last film he was involved in), Gibson elected to return to the screen here by playing another version of his well-established screen persona: a brutal, revenge-minded cop. Ultimately, the movie never takes Gibson out of his comfort zone, but we easily buy him as Tom Craven. His performance (which is closer to his character from Payback than anything else) is easily the best part of the movie.




The remainder of the cast is a mixed bag. Ray Winstone, who plays a corporate 'fixer' struggling to decide which side of the fence to come down on, submits an enthralling performance, and comes across as both gruffly sophisticated and subtly sinister. Danny Huston's performance as the villain is disappointingly bland, and represents one of the film's weakest aspects. The only other performances of note are courtesy of Australian actress Bojana Novakovic who plays Emma Craven, and Caterina Scorsone whose scene to shine is simply a masterpiece of escalating tension and enthralling character interaction.


In the 25 years since the original Edge of Darkness mini-series, dozens of similar conspiracy thrillers have reached both the big and small screen, which leaves this particular motion picture laughably clichéd and at times utterly naff. These days, it'd be more of a surprise if large companies weren't involved in shady meetings and backroom dealings with the government. What should have been a straightforward revenge flick develops into something more complicated and roundabout, and ultimately less interesting. Edge of Darkness remains passable entertainment thanks to Gibson's formidable performance and Campbell's directorial flair, but it's a flawed example of mainstream entertainment.

5.7/10



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