Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) returns home to her dad Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) during a break from her internship with Northmoor, a privately operated nuclear engineering company. Emma’s nose begins to bleed at dinner, at which point her father rushes to get her to the hospital. She doesn’t make it past the front door of the house. For a split second, we hear a masked gunman yell “Craven” before unloading a pack of hot lead into Emma with a pump-action shotgun. As she falls on the front porch, the assassin leaps into his getaway car, disappearing in the surrounding darkness.Initially ruled a missed attempt on Craven’s life, the murder investigation turns labyrinthine when clues hint at possible intrigue. Senators, hit men, industrial terrorists and the federal government all feature in this elaborate plot. Only the Catholic Church and Freemasons escape without a mention in Gibson’s latest film, “Edge of Darkness.” The conspiracy theory side of “Edge of Darkness” emerges victorious over the revenge side. This results in a film unable to reconcile several diffuse elements. For one, several better vengeance films have been made in recent years. The action scenes are irregularly paced, falling off at several points to make way for expository dialogue. That does not hold up well against lean, efficient romps like “Taken,” which unlike “Edge of Darkness” wastes no time alternating between spurts of bombast and calm. Liam Neeson zipping through Paris was fun to watch, inasmuch as one could withstand the xenophobic undertones.  Moreover, the familial connection between Emma and Craven is lax. We understand they hadn’t seen each other for years, yet it appears they didn’t know themselves at all. This simply isn’t a case of alienation, but rather indifference — Emma could be anybody’s daughter. Craven’s make-’em-pay pursuit therefore becomes obligatory, though several scenes evoke ghoulish satisfaction. Additionally, outlandish roles by Danny Huston and Ray Winstone elevate this leaden sailboat.The film is more effective at outlining the collusion between government, business and media interests as each attempts to achieve its goals. Here, the government risks a scandal and outsources its cleanup operation to outsiders, no questions asked. Northmoor, meanwhile, obtains political assistance in concealing its own sinister operations. The news channels, which everyone seems to be watching at the same time, continue to report singular events, oblivious to “the bigger picture,” the thread tying the loose narratives together. Any review of “Edge of Darkness” would be incomplete without a word on Gibson. That the entertainment industry realizes the importance of a celebrity’s public image is seen in the PR ecosystem flourishing around its stars. The latest faux pas produces monumental results: The problem has more often than not been when the controlled image clashes with what turns out to be the real one. But exceptional cases do occur, as with Gibson.Gibson was known for playing slightly kooky, vengeful characters. Audiences had no issues with his portrayal of the distraught father in “Mad Max” and “The Patriot,” the vicious cop with unresolved wife issues in “Lethal Weapon” or the delusional loser in “Conspiracy Theory.” His present predicament began when his inebriated monologue showed he might really be no different from the characters in his films. It didn’t help he has a known aesthetic propensity for violence and gore as showcased in “The Passion of the Christ.” In her review of the film, Salon film critic Stephanie Zacharek ventures to ask if “Gibson — who has, at certain points in his career, been a truly marvelous actor — [is] now just playing a slightly crazier version of himself?”While a reasonable question to ask, it nonetheless detracts from the simple pleasures of “Edge of Darkness,” a middlebrow conspiracy thriller with unfulfilled aspirations to be a revenge flick.Freke Ette is a political theory graduate student from Uyo, Nigeria. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_fette.
 
 
 
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