Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a solid working Boston police detective who collects his visiting and strangely ill daughter Emma and heads home, upon arriving though a masked gunman launches a shotgun assault at the house, killing Emma instantly.

Thomas is determined that the bullets were meant for him as retribution but with a bit more searching he finds that his daughter actually has a hidden pistol, raising the question, was the hit actually for him or was it for his daughter? With some more searching Thomas finds a strong link between Emma’s sickness and fear along with the company she worked for ‘Northmoor’, a company that Emma was planning on outing as manufacturers of illegal nuclear arms.

It is a great sight to see Mel Gibson back in the driver’s seat of a thriller action movie again, and this is the perfect re-entry for him. His portrayal of the lost father is the key to the whole movie, bringing together extreme sadness, brutal anger, and touches of insanity to draw you into the film. Edge Of Darkness has a gritty underworld style of filming that hasn’t really been seen much in the last decade or so, and the plot (originally based around a BBC miniseries) is a strong web of characters, deceit, uncertainty, and nail biting action, all of which roll into a very underrated movie of which nothing is certain until the final credits roll.

Being shot around the Massachusetts area, the film has a grey tone to it which sets the depressed and angry moods in subtly, this is backed up strongly by the score of Howard Shore whose previous movies you may recognise as The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Even with all the great points of this movie doesn’t have a massive amount of re-watch ability, once the mystery is gone there is no desire to reconnect with the characters, it’s a onetime deal and a massive blow for a good film. This will get simply added to the list of Gibson films and forgotten about, but hopefully, this will also be the film that begins his resurgence again.

Special Features:              

• Making Of

• Featurettes

• Deleted Scenes