THE EDGE OF DARKNESS

Dishonest advertising makes you believe that Edge of Darkness is just another vengeance with a bang thriller. Instead this paranoia thriller is far from the conventional assembly line, far from the routine and far from the mediocre. Protracted detours and an unnecessary extended length of two full hours keep this from being a complete success. But its aim to explore big issues of corporate illegal action and its interlocked political support, while achieving this with fairly original perspectives, grips your mental interest.

Up to this point, commercials have emphasized Mel Gibson pursuing his daughter’s killer with a “Death Wish” rage in his eye. Warner Bros. advertisements have not given you the proper impression that this is a complicated, and complex, conspiracy investigation where corrupt government and corporate malfeasance is involved. In other words, it aspires to be more. It aspires to be a 70's film.

You’ve seen enough movies where you can sniff out hackneyed corrupt government plots, but somehow this movie is layered and multifaceted. While the movie paints a primary villain into focus it generally contains a varietal range of villains, some more intrinsic to the girl’s death than others. Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is the girl, peculiarly sick but not necessarily contagious, who arrives home to visit her father Thomas Craven (Gibson, in his first lead role since “Signs”), a veteran Boston police detective. Not before long she is gunned down execution style.

Evidently poisoned and simultaneously targeted by contract killers, Emma seems to have been hiding disreputable secrets in regards to the fictional corporation she worked for called Northmoor. While only an intern at the research compound, it nevertheless is a high security clearance job that required absolute compliance. We gather that she was killed because she leaked information to activists. The media, and detective law enforcement, are already persuaded that Thomas was the supposed target in the shooting and that Emma’s death was a mistake.

Drama surrounding Northmoor is intriguing as we become vaguely oriented as to what is produced – it is one of those fictional sinister corporations that masquerades nuclear and weapons development with green peace. But in a later series of clandestine meetings held between a Northmoor executive and government operatives, the film finds its niche in plausibility. The script is by William Monahan (“The Departed”) and Andrew Bovell (“Lantana”), who collaboratively create intelligent layers of high crimes.

Yet at its most primal level, the movie just wants to see Craven break the rules so he can bust some heads. You might join in on some cruel applause when Craven pours poisoned milk down the throat of a bad guy. As this grey-haired lethal weapon, Gibson is really good in the movie constantly brewing with elevating intensity, and he’s got the Boston accent down pat.

But it is one of those movies that is way too reverent with its Boston accents, and some of the supporting players get you lost. Caterina Scorsone, as one of Emma’s former associates, lays on the accent in such a heavy-handed way that you can’t wait till she stops acting. Ray Winstone, that British actor, isn’t doing the Boston accent but his dialogue readings come off in a mumble – although he does have an interesting character to play as a guy who has in his longtime experience conducted both good and evil in his professional endeavors.

Other weaknesses slow down the momentum of the movie, none more evidently as the repetitive scenes of Gibson imagining Emma as a young girl again filling his presence. And it cannot but helped be mentioned that the script, in attempt to pipe up “mystery,” comprises characters who withhold telephone contacts (i.e., information) from Craven in a way that makes the audience feel as if the movie simply must be longer than it has to be. Emma’s surviving boyfriend (Shawn Roberts), who never leaves his flat despite being in danger, is signature as the stubborn paranoid and as a cloying irritant to the audience.

You might feel let down by such bumpy supporting characters carrying on with needlessly protracted anxiety fits. It’s the smart dialogue, the high corruption stuff, that keeps you riveted when “Edge of Darkness” is able to stick to its essentials.

It helps that Danny Huston (“The Constant Gardener,” “Children of Men”), with his seething intellectual-snob persona, portrays a figure of white collar evil. Martin Campbell, the director of “Casino Royale,” furnishes the Huston character with a magnificent office, with its glossy interiors and looming glass window view. Somehow Huston and that office stand out. Let’s recap: Superb work by Gibson and Huston, a screenplay with ideas, and hmm, that office.

Visit the official Edge of Darkness site at

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

Grade: B-