Edge of Darkness

Mel Gibson returned to the screen for the first time since 2003 when he starred alongside Robert Downey Jr. in The Singing Detective. As most know, his last time to be in theaters was when he directed The Passion of the Christ.

In Edge of Darkness, Detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) uses his professional skills to track down the man who murdered his daughter outside of his home. What was first suspected to be a missed assassination attempt with his daughter being the collateral damage, changes when he uncovers information about his daughters life that reveals a lot about why she may have been the target. His journey to find this man takes him from the lowest of lows, to the highest of highs. He vows to find out why his daughter was killed and who did it, even if it means that he loses his life in the process.

This movie really drew me into it based on the previews and that Mel Gibson was coming back to the big screen, because I loved a lot of his previous movies like Signs and The Patriot. The previews, don't do the movie justice (as is usual for good movies). I thought that Edge of Darkness would be an action-packed, kill-em-all, guy movie, but it was obvious very quickly that this would be different. There was a lot of thinking to be had in this movie. Not so much trying to figure out the ending, but to figure out what is going on at the current time in the movie. There was a little action, but not as much as I was expecting.  It was more of a drama with some thrill, and not a thriller supported by drama.

I am going to put this out there: I hated the ending. No, its not a mushy, prefictable ending where the good guy always wins... it leaves the story hanging. Some would argue that it didn't, but the only way for you to know the ending of part of the plot is to assume that something happens later. There was also a clip right at the end that was symbolizing something (I won't say what to spare a spoiler) and I did like that touch.

Props to the producer though, because I am not very jumpy in movies, but there was one scene that made me jump because something happened at the time when I least expected it to.

I thought the movie was put together pretty well. It was kind of slow and there was a lot of dialogue, which I will say was very difficult to understand sometimes. Many times some of the characters were talking softly and I could not understand several phrases because it seemed like they were mumbling. There is also a character that speaks with a british accent who was difficult to understand when he mumbled.

I give Edge of Darkness a 3 out of 5 stars. I was about a 3.5 before the movie ended how it did, so that knocked it to a 3. I think its a good movie to see. If you can, check it out during a matinee to save a few bucks. Overall, Mel Gibson did a great job acting in this movie and I'm anxious to see his next movie (IMDb has 2 movies on his profile... 1 in pre-production and 1 in post-production).