Edge of Darkness

It's hard to say if today's film can be considered mainstream or not. As a Mel Gibson movie you expect something huge. But then again, it came out after he went crazy and told the world to go fuck itself. So I doubt many people saw this one. It is called Edge of Darkness. The main players are Gibson, Ray Winstone, and Danny Huston. If you read our previous post, you know that we deliberately picked this one because it has Ray Winstone in it, and we love him. Interestingly, we also mentioned the movie The Proposition, which stars both Winstone and Huston as somewhat similar roles (quiet and brooding antihero and murderous lunatic, respectively).

Gibson's character Tom Craven is a Boston cop. His daughter comes home, clearly ill and harboring secrets about her job, and then gets violently murdered. Craven investigates and finds that the murder is linked to something much bigger.

(I think from now on, instead of putting in a sentence or two about whether or not the movie can be streamed on Netflix, I'll just do something like this:)

Netflix: NEGATIVE

Some secrets take us to the edge...of darkness...EDGE OF DARKNESS

Dylan: Don't lie, you wanted to watch this one because it's about (read: you get hard for) Boston, right?

Mark: I had a bet with myself on whether or not you’d start this by saying something about the fact it takes place in Boston.

Dylan: Oh yea? And who won?

Mark: The guy in the mirror.  I guess I had more faith in your maturity.  Oh well, what’s his is mine and what’s mine is mine.  So... since I’ve seen this before, I wanna hear your thoughts on it to start.

Dylan: Okay yea, I had never seen this one before. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go into this thing with a little bit of bias. Not because of the Boston thing. But mostly because of Gibson. I just don’t really get that guy anymore, and I was kind of anticipating him ruining it. I mean the guy may have been a good actor once, but now it seems like he's always trying to hard. I think of Signs and The Patrtiot, where there were identical scenes of him doing his super intense coughing/spitting/bulging-eyes/crying thing. I understand his character is going through a lot, but something about it just irritates me. And in this one he was kind of just the same guy, but with an over-the-top Boston accent. And how come no one else really had any accent at all?

Also, why does this movie hate women so much? I think there were two women in the whole movie and both of them died or were violently injured in incredibly brutal, bloody (and deliberately slow-mo) ways. ...your defense?

Mark: While I agree that Gibson did seem to overact with his character, in a way I felt that it was justified when you put it in the context of what has been happening to Craven.  From the start he’s a quieter character, though he lashes out a bit, but it's not too outlandish.  But when things begin to unravel for him, he starts to act more manic, and I thought that the feeling of overacting worked well.  And, maybe to you, no one else had an accent, but the movie did a good job having everyone who actually lives in Boston have an accent in some way.  His daughter does, the cops do, the lawyer, and probably some others in passing.

Dylan: Okay, then I guess Gibson just had his accent on set to full-on Affleck, making the other, more natural ones less noticeable. Frankly, Ray Winstone had the worst Boston accent I have ever heard.

Mark:  Oh definitely, Winstone’s accent came on so fucking strong it sounded British.  And I will admit Gibson had the strongest accent and in some places it felt forced.  Also I enjoyed that the company his daughter worked for was called Northmoor, just so when said you really hear the accent.  But back to Winstone, I thought his character was easily the most interesting. Not only what he was but more so what he said.  Some of his quick responses to people were great, in that they were funny but also poignant.

Dylan: Okay, that reminds me of two things I wanted to comment on. First of all, do the filmmakers hate Massachusetts? On like eight separate occasions they were like “everything is illegal in Massachusetts.” And it even played a role in the story when those two hit men got arrested for having weapons within city limits. And secondly, did Winstone bug Gibson’s house or something? There were times when he would like repeat a line that Gibson said to someone else, in a different scene. Is it just supposed to show that they think so alike they occasionally say, verbatim, the same things? Or was there a more logical reason for why Winstone was quoting him?

Mark: I think the quoting was just left to the viewer and I took it to go with his growing psychosis, and that Winstone’s character seems to always be ahead of everyone.  He’s never out of the loop when things happen and I think just having him quote stuff let's the viewer see that fact.  And the “everything is illegal in Massachusetts” is one of the lines I laughed at.  It’s just poking fun at the strict laws in MA but also that there’s still quite a lot of crime.  I thought the script was pretty solid all the way through.  It was a bare-boned crime mystery.  Most characters who come in are established right there as fairly one note, but they’re used so well and it’s written well enough that that doesn’t hurt it.

Also you brought something up earlier about the women, and I don’t know.  I don’t think it’s deliberate by the filmmakers, but it is apparent, like you said.

Dylan: I will agree that the characters are kind of one-sided. Which works to a degree. But one thing I didn’t like was that Danny Huston was the villain, for no reason except that we are told he is. The other characters said that he was crazy and murderous and so we just assumed he was, and that was it. I mean there was that line he threw at Gibson, "what does it feel like?", that came out of nowhere and made him seem like a real dick. But beyond that...I don't know. I never really got the sense that he was evil. 

Also, I agree that Winstone’s character was probably the most interesting, but it seemed like a lot of his investigating was mostly watching the news, where everyone already seemed to be talking about everything Danny Huston and the government was trying to keep secret. One last point, what was the deal with him going to the doctor and talking about his hallucinations and stuff. I was wondering if they were going to somehow connect that back to the fact that he worked for the government. Like, I don’t know, maybe even his character, the renegade ‘fixer’ is somehow controlled by the shadowy government suits. But I don’t think that ever materialized. Go!

Mark: Well someone had a lot to say.  Jesus.  Danny Huston’s character is almost cartoonishly evil.  He was warned multiple times by people working with him that they should stop hunting Craven or stop with the entire operation, and he’s like “nope, it’s already started and even though we’ve failed a bunch, I’m sure we’ll get him this time.”  He’s almost a Saturday morning villain.  Also, I’m not spoiling anything; if you can’t figure the head of a massive, private nuclear facility is evil, then I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do to help you.

And the way I figured it, the illness that was effecting Winstone’s character was meant to give him a different way to view what was happening to Craven.  When they talk, it always somehow comes back to whether it’s worse to lose a child or to never have had one.  And I think as this illness progresses, his character begins to view his life and all his actions more from Craven’s point of view, which ultimately leads him to make some drastic choices.

Dylan: Hmm, I see. Then what about that scene where Gibson is handcuffed to a gurney somewhere in Northmoor and those people in biohazard suits are there? Is everyone involved with this place just naturally horror-movie evil? As for Winstone's arc, I just don’t think that part of the plot was really fleshed out enough for me to get behind it. 

Overall, I like the idea of the movie more than the movie itself. Like it was a pretty original and interesting crime thriller, lots of twists and turns that were I admitted did not seem coming. I kind of hated how the violence was extreme and purely for shock value. Like when that girl stepped out of the car at the instant another car was cruising past at like 80 mph. It seemed more like a Final Destination movie.

Mark:  I kinda liked the violence.  Not in a psychotic way, but it served to show how dangerous everything was and how it was getting.  The end gets very violent, but it serves to show how far Craven is willing to go to find that justice for his daughter.  And in that way, I liked it.  It brings us down to a very brutal level, but there is still care in there.  We still feel for Craven and his pain even as it goes along.

And, I don’t want to throw the movie under the bus, but it’s based on a British mini-series.  I’ve never seen it, though I’ve read that it’s an incredible success and acclaimed mini-series.  So the movie seems like it’s probably just the framework of the show, since it’s rather difficult to put it all into 2 hours.

Dylan: I could sort of see it being a series of some kind instead of a movie. The ending shootout was pretty good, I’ll admit. And I appreciated Gibson’s last line to Huston. I guess I don’t have much else to say. It was a so-so movie for me. I can’t really think of anything else to compare it to. Like I said, it was fairly original (though I do not watch a lot of crime thrillers). But I would say the first major improvement would be replacing Gibson with someone else. Like Ray Winstone. It's too bad he was already in the movie as someone else.

So tell me, Mark, how many Oscars did it win?

Mark:  Oh Jesus man, all the fucking Oscars.  It was bathed in Oscar gold.  But really, none.  And I thought it was a pretty solid, straightforward crime thriller.  It didn’t do much to set it apart from so many others in that category, but what it did, it did well.  And I said my bit on Gibson.  So if it comes on and you’ve got nothing to do, give a look. At the very least, you’ll have your daily required dose of Ray Winstone.  

Dylan: It's better than Viagra. ...I've heard.

------------------------------------------------------------

No quiz question from Mark this time? For shame. So...Edge of Darkness. You finally get to see what it's like when Mark and I don't necessarily agree on a movie. Our next feature will be a little piece called Bronson. I'm gonna go ahead and call this a Dylan Pick. It is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, and it stars celebrity Bane impersonator Tom Hardy as a deranged British prison inmate. As far as I'm concerned, it functions as the Bane origin story that Christopher Nolan refused us. And since you've probably never heard of Bronson, it makes this Bane quote all the more applicable: "No one cared who I was until I put on the mask." The only thing it's missing is, of course, Ray Winstone.