| Edge of Darkness | |
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Every era has its own kind of conspiracy movie. The interwar years produced a memorable batch of films about the dangers of people with foreign accents, best represented by Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. For obvious reasons, Cold War paranoia fretted about the dangers of convoluted Communist infiltration plots with films like John Frakenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate. The radical 70s saw liberal professionals selflessly upholding democratic freedoms against the proto-totalitarian machinations of the state in “All the President’s Men”. In our own times the conspiracy genre has suffered a hostile takeover by films about corporate corruption. Thrillers such as Michael Clayton, The Constant Gardener and State of Play have all pandered to our disgust at the evil CEOs who rule the world. Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story has taken the genre into the world of mass-market factual filmmaking. The sub-genre has even made its way to Bollywood with Madhur Bhandarkar’s Corporate and was recently given a Japanese spin in the Ken Watanabe vehicle Shizumanu Taiyo. Edge of Darkness has nothing of worth to add to this body of work. Loosely based on a 1980s BBC miniseries, the film follows veteran Boston detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) as he seeks answers after his 24-year-old daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is murdered on his front porch. The film makes a half-arsed attempt to mystify us as to the reasons for the shooting but it soon emerges that –yes, you guessed it – Emma was in serious trouble with the corrupt and utterly evil corporation she worked for. What follows is a story content on going through the bog standard clichés of the genre, one by one. There’s the big bad corporation, the public officials that are in its pocket, the henchmen with slicked-back hair who ride around in big black cars and the scared witnesses who won’t come forward. And, of course, there’s the lone saviour of the world, who in this case also happens to be a murder detective. Choosing a script that lacks an ounce of originality isn’t a great idea for someone returning to acting after a long period of absence. Although he is far from the top of his form, Gibson is probably the least bad thing about the film, but there are no real emotions for him to peg his performance to in Edge of Darkness. Craven soon realises that being a lone saviour of the world can indeed make a  man lonely, so he starts having cringe-worthy conversations with the ghost of his daughter in her childlike incarnation. The only other significant relationship he strikes up during his adventures is with Jedburgh, a fixer specialised in cleaning up corporate messes who is working on the Craven brief.Robert De Niro hasn’t been particularly well known for good decision making in recent years, but walking away from the role of Jedburgh sees him return to form. The part was subsequently given to the least versatile actor in the world, Ray Winstone, who plays the character as a Cockney with cancer who has a penchant for unimaginative F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes and philosophical references to Diogenes of Sinope. The results are predictably bizarre and the ambiguous relationship between Craven and Jedburgh never really works. In the absence of a compelling story or interesting characters, it was down to director Martin Campbell to make Edge of Darkness work with a high degree of visual pizzazz. Having helmed the original TV series and scored a well-deserved hit with Casino Royale a few years ago, the Kiwi was probably the right choice for the director’s chair, but the film’s visual style is quite frankly boring and heavily depends on cheap thrills to keep audiences mildly interested. Back to the drawing room, then, for the Hollywood execs who wish to illuminate us on the issue of corporate evil.
Rating: *
Starring: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic Review by Alex Diaz
For more Hollywood action, you could also try Armored or The Book of Eli.
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How many more corporate conspiracy films does Hollywood have to churn out before we finally catch their drift and realise that big business is bad for our health? Judging by Edge of Darkness - Mel Gibson’s lacklustre return to acting after seven years spent offending Jews – Tinseltown movies about the wickedness of capitalism are here to stay. 
