Edge of Darkness (2010 film)

Plot

At South Station, Boston, police homicide detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) picks up his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic), who comes home to visit and vomits while getting into the car. As Craven prepares dinner at home, Emma suffers a nosebleed and vomits again. As the two attempt to go to the hospital, a masked gunman below yells "Craven!", fatally wounds Emma, and escapes.

After identifying the body at the medical examiner's office, he takes a sample of Emma's hair as a memento and incidentally discovers that it is radioactive. Then, though everyone assumes Craven was the gunman's target, when he finds Emma had a .45 pistol in her night stand, he starts to suspect that possibly Emma was the intended target. At the police station, he checks the gun's ownership and finds that it belongs to her boyfriend David (Shawn Roberts). David is living in fear of a company called Northmoor, where Emma worked. She discovered that Northmoor, a research and development facility under contract to the U.S. government by Jack Bennett (Danny Huston), was secretly manufacturing nuclear weapons using foreign material and foreign specifications. The weapons were intended to be traced to foreign nations if they were used as dirty bombs.

Burning her clothing in his backyard, he encounters Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a British "consultant" tasked with preventing the disclosure of Emma's information, dealing with Craven however he sees fit. Jedburgh takes a liking to Craven, leaving him to investigate. Craven repeatedly has visions of Emma, even having short conversations and interactions with her, typically as the happy young child he remembers and loves. Craven eventually discovers through one of Emma's friends, an activist who is nearly killed by another of Northmoor's agents. They eventually kill a hitman marked as a fall guy after he is set up for killing Emma.

Craven confronts lawyer and Massachusetts U.S. Senator Jim Pine (Damian Young) who was contacted earlier by Emma, revealing that Craven knows almost everything that happened. After examining his fridge with a Geiger counter, Craven discovers that his milk has been contaminated, most likely with the poison used on his daughter. His fellow detective and friend, Bill (Jay O. Sanders), comes to Craven's home while the Northmoor agents break into the house. Craven realizes that Bill set him up before the agents taser and kidnap Craven. He wakes up handcuffed to a gurney in the Northmoor facility, but manages to escape.

His health deteriorating rapidly from the poison, Craven heads to Bennett's house and executes the Northmoor agents after forcing one of them at gunpoint to scream the name "Craven," finally identifying him as Emma's killer. Bennett shoots and wounds Craven, but Craven also wounds Bennett, and manages to force some of the radioactive milk, which he has brought with him, down Bennett's throat. Bennett attempts to take some pills to counteract the radioactivity, but Craven shoots him dead.

Jedburgh, who is suffering from an unrelated terminal illness, meets with the Senator and two political advisers who had hired Jedburgh to handle Craven. They want to spin the Northmoor incident in a positive light. Jedburgh suggests that an assassination attempt on the Senator could be an angle to drive Bennett's death out of the headlines. They are pleased with this idea until Jedburgh abruptly kills both advisers and the senator. When a young Massachusetts State Police officer nervously enters the Senator's room upon hearing the gunshots, Jedburgh asks the officer at gunpoint if he has children. When the officer replies yes, Jedburgh lowers his gun, allowing the officer to shoot him dead.

As Craven lies dying in the hospital from his wounds and radiation poisoning, a young reporter for the local FOX TV station WFXT, who had spoken to Craven a few nights earlier at his home, opens a letter from him which contains DVDs (recorded by Emma) revealing the conspiracy, with Craven's "good luck" wishes, ensuring Northmoor's end. As Craven dies, the spirit of Emma comforts him. Father and daughter are then shown leaving the hospital together, walking down the corridor and toward a bright, white light.

Cast

Production

In 2002, Martin Campbell announced that he was planning to adapt Edge of Darkness for the cinema. Active development began in early 2007 when Campbell met with producer Graham King, who first enlisted Australian playwright Andrew Bovell to write, and then William Monahan (fresh from winning an Academy Award for King's The Departed) to re-write the screenplay. Michael Wearing and BBC Films also co-produced the film. Filming began on 18 August 2008 in Boston, Massachusetts. A scene where Craven scatters his daughter's ashes at a beach was filmed at Rockport on 25 and 26 September. They shot some scenes in Merrimac, Massachusetts from 15 September 2008 to 18 September 2008. Additional scenes were shot in Malden, Massachusetts in the old Malden hospital. Some of the final scenes were shot at a home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Additionally, Gibson and his crew set up shop for filming in western Massachusetts, with 180 staff staying in Northampton hotels. They shot in various locations in the Pioneer Valley, including Tully O'Reilly's Pub, the Northampton Athletic Club, and an older part of the Hampshire County Courthouse, all in Northampton. Also, Sugarloaf Mountain was shut down for a few days while they rented it out. They also filmed at the Notch Visitor Center, Rt. 116, Amherst. The film takes place in America, unlike the television series, which was based in England. "The idea was to transfer the story to a different time and place rather than just repeat what we did in England," Campbell said. "Boston seemed like the perfect location because it does have a whole English, Irish signature on it." Jack Bennett disembarks from a helicopter in one scene. The FAA registration number, N401LH, is visible on the fuselage. This helicopter later collided with a Piper PA-32 on 8 August 2009, over the Hudson River, resulting in nine deaths. The helicopter was owned by Liberty Helicopters, which offers sight-seeing tours around Manhattan. The film was originally scored by classical composer John Corigliano. However, the decision was made during postproduction (after Corigliano's score had been recorded and dubbed) to replace his score with a new one by Howard Shore.

Critical reaction

On aggregate reviewer Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 56% based on 203 reviews; the average rating is 5.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "For better and for worse, Edge of Darkness offers vintage Mel Gibson, working within the familiar framework of a bloody revenge thriller." On review aggretator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, has a rating score of 55 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally mixed or average reviews".

Film critic Richard Roeper of Richard Roeper & the Movies gave the film a B stating: "Gibson excels in this entertaining conspiracy thriller" in his review for the film. Michael Rechtshaffen, a critic for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in his review, "An intense Mel Gibson performance anchors this brutally effective crime thriller". Some critics, such as A.O. Scott of The New York Times, saw a similarity to Taken. Other critics, such as Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips, and New Orleans Times-Picayune film critic Mike Scott, described Ray Winstone's character in the film as "intriguing".

Box office

On its first weekend, the film opened number two, grossing $17.1 million behind Avatar. The film went on to gross $43.3 million in the United States and Canada and $37.8 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $81.1 million, against a production budget of $80 million.

Home media

The film was released by Warner Home Video on 11 May 2010, on DVD and Blu-ray.