Put simply, the original Edge of Darkness, a BBC mini-series from 1985, is a small screen masterpiece. Written by Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by Martin Campbell it combined the personal and political in damning, resonant ways, catching the atmosphere of moral surrender that the British state reeked of at the time. It was astounding viewing and remains so.
The question then is not how the Hollywood remake compares – plainly it’s unfavourable – but how well it succeeds in establishing its own parameters and qualities. The answer to that, at least, is fitting, because in a movie where the compromised are legion, so is the picture itself.
You can’t say the filmmakers weren’t aware of what they were facing. The remake is also directed by Campbell, who in the 25 years between these characters has proven to be the best handler of the James Bond franchise (Goldeneye, Casino Royale) and not a great deal more. Knowing that he can’t achieve what required 325 minutes in just 114, he keeps the framework, and a touch of the ambience, before finding a blunt, pre-emptive culmination to what are subtle, expansive themes.
Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) is a widowed Boston homicide detective who barely has his 24-year-old daughter, Emma (Australian actor Bojana Novakovic), home for a visit before it becomes obvious that she’s deeply ill. They’re not even out the front door before a gunman puts a shotgun blast into her chest before escaping. The briefest of private investigations into Emma, conducted as his colleagues naturally assume he was the target, suggests to Craven that she was involved in some way with unknown events at the nuclear research facility where she worked; two minutes with her employer, suited sociopath Bennett (Danny Huston) virtually confirms it.
As roles go this is the right one for Mel Gibson to make his comeback with. He carries pain in his eyes like a well-worn jacket, and the character’s grief is soon channeled into retribution. Gibson has a lived-in face now, the odd follicular issue, and he’s at the upper limit of the leading man market. In other words he’s at an age where he can play a man who has no fear because there’s nothing of value left in his life; what was once roguish charm is now cold disdain.
The original mini-series was concerned with finding answers, but the movie is taken with revenge. It’s a natural, if stunted, progression because Gibson is no sounding board. He’s drawn to action. So while the adaption, by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell (Lantana) and Boston specialist, Departed screenwriter William Monahan, has the menacing, circuitous dialogue down, it can’t create an atmosphere beyond that of the stock-standard thriller; nothing grows in the shadows.
It also means that Craven’s spiritual foil, security services operative Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), is here little more than a cipher. 'I’m usually the guy who stops you connecting A to B," he tells Craven in one of their brief encounters, but even that’s overly generous. He’s a bystander, afforded a showy finale, in a film that foregoes the soul for the lure of blood.
