MOVIE REVIEW: Edge of Darkness

By Lawrence Griffin | gargoyle@flagler.edu

This is a terrible movie. I have really no other way to start this off, other than that. Edge of Darkness is a very, very boring movie that only breaks up the boredom to either offend you or disgust you, or both. The basic premise is that Mel Gibson’s daughter comes home for a vague reunion and will not disclose much about her current life. Obviously hiding something, she is killed less than ten minutes into the film, and it is all downhill from there.

This is like an all-purpose pocketknife of poor quality filmmaking. Edge of Darkness manages to bore the viewer, with a long, long string of scenes with dry dialogue and dull delivery. It repeats itself to the point of ad nauseam, with every scene basically brewing down to nothing more than this: Gibson interrogates bad guy, Gibson gets out gun and Gibson shoots. It disturbs, with the scenes of Gibson and his ghost-daughter not coming off as sad or tragic like they intended, but rather just creepy and unnecessary.

Gibson does not even do that great of a job at acting here. He works with what he has been given, but unfortunately all he has been given is a bunch of faux-witty quips that I find incredibly annoying. His acting here is as dry and bare-bones as anything else in the movie. And while I am on that subject, I must note the acting of the little girl they got to play his daughter in her younger age. She is just so over the top sweet and bubbly that it is like she came out of a horrendous family commercial. It is about as endearing as tooth rot.

There is no real action in the traditional action movie sense here, only random, ultra-violent shootings. It is not exciting. These scenes are just as boring and unpleasant as the talking in the rest of the film. I have no idea what they were trying to get across with this movie. Everything is seemingly shot in the dark, hoping to hook onto something that will incite an emotional response.

The movie is purely exploitative, gory trash with no redeeming values. At the end of the film, I was left feeling ripped off and empty. It is poorly paced, poorly directed and poorly written. Just skip Edge of Darkness; avoiding it will vastly improve your life.