Sunday, September 26, 2010

Movie review – “Edge of Darkness” (2010) **

A disgraceful bowdlerisation of the brilliant mini series, which replaces excellent ideas, scenes and characters with dumb ones. For example they reduce the great "discovery of the dildo scene" - one of the most skilled moments of screenwriting in history for my money (Bob Peck looking at a hope chest, discovering something childish, then discovering a dildo, then a Geiger counter, turning it on and finding everything is radioactivity) - to simply discovering a Geiger counter. They cut out the pro-environmental message of the mini series (all the stuff about Gaia) and have Mel Gibson beat up an environmentalist; they pull back on Jedburgh's involvement and remove the love interest and those two brilliant government spies; add a whole lot of stupid cliched ideas: the friend of the hero who turns out to be corrupt; getting a baddy to yell "Craven" before he's killed by Mel; giving all the information to a journalist at the end (this plot idea should be banned from Hollywood films for ten years). The only thing the film seems interested in his having scenes where angry middle aged men shoot other people with handguns. Mel Gibson is ideal casting but I blame him for a lot of these stupid changes (director Martin Campbell too); Ray Winstone is a good substitute for Joe Don Baker.

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