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Jan 28, 2010 by News Gatherer
Mel Gibson generally looks fairly beat as badge detective Tom Craven in “Edge of Darkness,” but as an actor he seems fairly rejuvenated. Great it isn’t, but “Edge” can sometimes put you on the edge of your seat. After dull roles, and controversial stints as a director, Gibson at 54 storms back in something better than the “Lethal Weapon” series.
Surely the required autopsy would have revealed her radioactive contamination, leading to public, probing questions of Bennett, the lab boss played with pure arrogance by Danny Huston (his office is an Olympian aerie overlooking what seems a vast, Thomas Cole landscape painting). The script, by William Monahan (”The Departed”) and Andrew Bovell (”Lantana”) soon commits one of its implausibles. Craven loves one thing more than the Boston force, his daughter Emma (Bojanja Novakovic as a young adult, Gabrielle Popa as a little girl, both very appealing). But Emma comes home from her abstruse work at a secretive nuclear lab feeling very sick, and then is gunned down appropriate next to her dad.
Despite such stuff, “Edge” delivers a wallop as Craven tracks the creeps behind Emma’s death, including a snooty U.S. senator. We can additionally question the very middle-aged Craven bashing in a glass-block window with bliss of his feet. Administrator Martin Campbell, who did two Bonds and two Zorros, zips together tough encounters, acid dialog, startling shocks and a quality cast, including Ray Winstone as a Brit apache determined to savor the last cigars and wines of a misspent life, and Caterina Scorsone as a friend of Emma whose terror is palpable.
Essentially bouncing from “Death Wish” to “The China Syndrome” to “D.O.A.,” the movie is additionally appropriate of our times. Gibson hauls the plot load, using his age well, achieving some of the hard-bitten force of classic unstoppables like Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan. Politicians, beware. The flashbacks and spectral voicings from his daughter are sentimental, but the emotions lift the picture above standard TV filler. It taps into acerbity about the elite and corporate ability that may be baking to a boil. (Opens Friday; rated R) 1/2.
Braid a thread of Quentin Tarantino to a strand of Guy Ritchie and a hair of Martin Scorsese, then let David Mamet tie the knot, and you have the blowing needlecraft of “44 Inch Chest.” The first feature of British administrator Malcolm Venville was scripted by “Sexy Beast” writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto, and includes a very funny nod to movie history (De Mille’s “Samson and Delilah,” no less). It additionally talks and looks like a filmed play, set mostly in a gang’s London safe house so stagey that it deserves box seats.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNh18qZTLSo&feature=youtube_gdata
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