EDGE OF DARKNESS - not sharp, at the end

Martin Campbell’s -’Edge of Darkness’, 2010, UK /US, lacklustrous thriller, Super35 a/r 2.35, 117mins, with Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston & Bojana Novakovic, written by William Monahan, Andrew Bovell & Troy Kennedy-Martin, with a budget of $60million, produced by Tim Headington, Graham King & Michael Wearing with DoP Phil Meheux, was seen at the Odeon, Putney, London 30/1/10

Just passes the time of day!

3 bodies pop to the surface on a calm lake somewhere in Massachusetts, and then we see recorded video pictures( June 9 1990) of a very young girl( Gabrielle Popa) and a just heard father O.S. Now we’re with Thomas Craven( Mel) who’s meeting the same but very grown up Emma( Bojana) at South Station, Boston. As she gets into Thomas’s car she throws up but she says she is tired. En route, she’s vague about her boyfriend and her job, but he’s glad to have her home. She unpacks and he’s gets a meal ready but when she reappears she starts bleeding through her nose and throws up again. Obviously very ill, he gets ready to rush her to hospital but as they pass thru the front door a gunman blasts her away.

Now, the whole of Northampton’s police station is in his house as they think he was the target - Thomas doesn’t take to Detective Whitehouse( Jay O Sanders) and we get to gather( correctly!) that he must be a cop as well - he asks for the cops to leave and they finally oblige. Next day he goes to the morgue to identify her body and takes a lock of her hair in remembrance. After scattering her ashes - when naturally he has flashes of her memory - he goes through her effects and finds she was carrying a gun - that the police surprisingly didn’t turn up! As a cop he traces the gun, which wasn’t Emma’s but belongs to one David Burnham( Shawn Roberts). Now he can make progress - and he’s on the right track, too!

http://edge-of-darkness.warnerbros.com/

http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/film_info/s135/Tottenham_Court_Rd/m12130/Edge_Of_Darkness/

simon

www.rudereviews.com

My Gran, listless in this flick, says that, well, she’d had a small walk-on part in the original TV production - but time goes on & that as a remake of the BBC’s 1985 mini-series, they’d lost most of the consideration, mystery and distrust - due to too much gung ho, in your face, gun fire. But when it was there, in the assured acting of Danny Huston( as the slimey CEO) and Ray Winstone( as Darius an English shadowy government operator) things got better - “I’d been there, remember” - and she reckons the 2 Darius’s could be related!