Darkness suits Gibson

Edge of Darkness brings Mel Gibson back to the screen for the first time since 2002's Signs. Though his headline-grabbing antics since then have brought him a certain amount of infamy, in front of the camera, Gibson is still a great actor, and Edge of Darkness is a fantastic, if flawed, film.

Gibson starts as Detective Thomas Craven, a Boston police officer. The film begins with Craven and his daughter Emma reuniting at a train station. After a couple of scenes of small talk, Emma begins vomiting at Craven's dinner table. They frantically scramble to the front door to get to a hospital when a masked gunman appears, yelling "Craven" before blasting Emma in the chest with a shotgun. Craven then begins the search for the murderer, which naturally turns out to be much more complex than it seems.

I'll get my negative criticisms out of the way. First, Mel Gibson is about as authentic a Bostonian as Derek Jeter. His accent sounds vaguely like Crocodile Dundee trying to do a bad John F. Kennedy impression.

Second, there are a lot of small plotlines that don't really add anything to the movie. Conspiracy theories mix with characters speaking from beyond the grave, and none of it seems really necessary, and just serves to make the audience's heads spin.

Also, the attempts at humor don't work at all. Edge of Darkness is a brutal film, roughly the cinematic equivalent of getting hit in the face with a shovel. The writers realized this and tried to work in a couple of jokes along the way to lighten the mood, if only for a moment. They don't.

I make it seem like I hated this movie, but I actually really enjoyed it. The actors all know what their role is in the film, and they do it well. The good guys are easy to root for and the bad guys make the audience loathe them and root for their downfall.

And for all the film does wrong, it more than makes up for it in the film's conclusion. The last ten minutes are supremely satisfying and make trying to wade through the convoluted plotlines in the middle third worth the effort.

In the end, Edge of Darkness understands what audiences want in an action film, and it delivers. When in the film a character tells another, "Deep down you know you deserve this," you know he's right, both for who he's talking to and for the audience.