EDGE OF DARKNESS (2010) (***)

Coming out a year after Liam Neeson's TAKEN, this film seemed like just another dad on a revenge mission flick. The only big difference seemed that it marked the return of Mel Gibson after a seven-year hiatus from acting. But Martin Campbell's tale of a grieving father is far more compelling than TAKEN's attempt to be a BOURNE clone.

Based on the 1980s British miniseries of the same name, Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a Boston cop, who is pleased to have his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic, DRAG ME TO HELL) home on an unexpected visit. However, she becomes violently ill and as he goes to take her to the hospital, she is gunned down by a masked man. The police department believes that the killer was targeting Thomas, but as he digs deeper, Emma's friends are petrified of her bosses at the high-tech company, Northmoor.

When Craven goes to talk to Emma's boyfriend, David (Shawn Roberts, JUMPER), the young man jumps him with a knife, worried that Northmoor is after him. Her friend Melissa (Caterina Scorsone, TV's CRASH) knows something, but won't talk. One night, a mysterious secret agent named Jedburgh (Ray Winstone, BREAKING & ENTERING) pops up in Craven's backyard warning him to not mettle in this mess. The conspiracy involves Northmoor's cold exec Jack Bennett (Danny Huston, THE CONSTANT GARDENER), nuclear contracts, the U.S. government and the powerful Sen. Jim Pine (Damian Young, SEX IN THE CITY). The truth is being obscured at every turn and it's not what really happened, but what can be proved. For Craven, that doesn't matter, because he's a man with nothing to lose.

The role of Craven is a perfect one for Gibson. He has made a career playing slightly off avenging angels, but he plays this one down a few notches. The character isn't a super-agent, but a grieving father looking for the truth. He is a detective and he does his job.

Like the Craven character, Campbell keeps the film on a realistic level. Even moments when Craven sees and converses with his dead daughter are done in a straightforward way. He doesn't need fancy fight choreography or stylish editing to keep people engaged, he has an emotionally honest story to do that. That said he and writers William Monahan and Andrew Bovell strategically grab our attention with flares of violence that heighten the tension. The timing and pacing of these moments is done wonderfully.

Now because the plot involves elements that are far above Craven's pay scale, he needs to be helped along. This is where Jedburgh comes in. We know he's been contracted by the bad guys to make this controversy go away, but what is his agenda? The film paints him as a rogue figure at a crossroads in his life, but in the end, he's a plot devise through and through. Winstone gives him a cool, likeable quality, but the character is still the least convincing part of the otherwise tight film.

In the best way, this thriller is like the ones done in the 1970s. There is a mystery to be solved and it involves shady government cover-ups. It's about real characters' and their realistic mission. Thomas Craven isn't a secret superhero; he's a father and a cop. In his investigation, he enters a world of secret dealings and hired assassins, but it's not the world he lives in. When he visits that world, he doesn't transform into one of them, with some gun-fu master skills. He's too smart for fancy BS and so is this film.