Edge of Darkness 2010

Edge of Darkness is a 2010 film adaptation of the 1985 BBC television series, Edge of Darkness. The film stars Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone, and is directed by Martin Campbell and produced by Michael Wearing, who also directed and produced the series respectively. Edge of Darkness follows a detective (Gibson) investigating the murder of his activist daughter (Bojana Novakovic), while uncovering political conspiracies and cover-ups in the process.

The film is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, which also distributed the unrelated 1943 film with the same title.

On the lake outside of Northmoor International’s Nuclear Facility, three bodies float to the surface in the moonlight. Detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is waiting for his daughter, Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) at South Station train station. She arrives and Tom hugs his daughter. As Tom goes to pick up some food, Emma starts vomiting violently. Tom thinks she has food poisoning and brings her home. They idly chat and she tells Tom about her new boyfriend but doesn’t elaborate. She complains of an upset stomach, so Tom goes to get her a Ginger Ale. She starts bleeding from the nose and vomiting and asks her father to take her to the hospital. She tells him that she hasn’t told him everything about her life. As they leave the house, a masked man yells “CRAVEN” and fires two shotgun blasts into Emma’s chest. She is blasted through the door and dies in Thomas’s arm. The gunmen get away in their vehicle and Thomas is left crying over Emma’s body.

Cops from the precinct arrive and try to console Tom. He doesn’t really respond well to their presence. His former partner, Whitehouse (Jay O. Sanders), offers to have him spend the night at his place, but Tom turns him down. He kicks all the cops out of his apartment and goes and wipes Emma’s blood off of his face. He looks through Emma’s cabinet and sees a handgun. Her phone goes off and Tom picks up. The caller doesn’t say anything and ends the call. He hallucinates Emma’s presence and goes to bed. He wakes up to a car backfiring and draws his gun. He goes into work, where the news is reporting that he was the intended target and that Emma was an accident. Tom goes down to the morgue to identify Emma’s body. He cuts off a lock of her hair and goes to the park. He stares at an empty bench and imagines Emma as a child reading her favorite book.

Tom pays a visit to Emma’s boyfriend by pulling up the serial number of the gun that is registered to Emma’s boyfriend. He doesn’t answer the door, so Tom jimmies it open with a pick. A fight between the two ensues with Emma’s boyfriend attempting to knife him. Tom incapacitates him and the two talk. The boyfriend tells Tom that he’s being watched by Northmoor and gives him Emma’s old stuff. He hints to Tom that the head of Northmoor, Bennett (Danny Huston), is responsible in some way.

Moore (Dennis O’Hara) calls Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), his company clean up man. Jedburgh is a fixer who helps corporations cover up messes. Moore tells Jedburgh that someone broke into the Northmoor Nuclear Facility and that three activists drowned and that Emma was killed in connection to the break in. Jedburgh asks if he will be covering up Emma’s death along with the others. Moore tells him that Tom is snooping around and that it’s up to him to make sure the dots don’t get connected.

Tom goes to Emma’s apartment. He sees that it has been subtly burglarized and her computer was taken. He goes through her belongings and finds a handheld Geiger counter, which goes off when Emma’s hair is placed next to it. Tom realizes that his daughter was dying of radiation poisoning.

Tom pays Bennett a visit in his office and asks about his daughter’s job. Bennett tells Tom that Emma was a glorified intern and was working on projects deemed “classified.” Tom asks how Emma contracted radiation poisoning. Bennett is surprised but says that there was no radiation near her job since Emma was involved in designing and planning their nuclear line. Bennett offers Tom his condolences…and then asks Tom what it feels like to watch a daughter die.

Tom calls in the break in at his daughter’s apartment and convinces the cop to report the break in as a funeral related robbery. He then goes home and starts burning Emma’s radiation contaminated clothing outside of his house in a barrel. He pulls his gun out and points it at Jedburgh, who is calmly sitting on Tom’s picnic table, watching the fire. Jedburgh comment on Tom’s burning of evidence and tells him that a few days before Emma’s death she was profiled as a terrorist. Not accused, simply profiled. Tom tells him that he knows that the target was Emma. Jedburgh asks if he plans on making any arrests. Tom tells him he doesn’t intend to bring anyone in, just kill them. He doesn’t mention the radiation marks on Emma’s hair or his suspicions about Northmoor. Jedburgh leaves his card and leaves Tom in his kitchen, wondering just who Jedburgh is working for.

Tom chases down a lead from Emma’s phone and arranges a meeting. The contact agrees to meet with him and tell him all about how she was involved with Emma and the three dead activists but that it will take her a day or two to return to Massachusetts from New Hampshire. He pays Emma’s boyfriend another visit and grills him about Emma and her involvement with the dead activists. Emma’s boyfriend tells him that she showed the activists how to break into Northmoor’s nuclear facility, but their deaths were not the result of a drowning, but exposure to lethal amounts of radiation. He details his suspicion that Bennett created the protocol to kill anyone who tries to get in or out of the facility. Tom is shocked but thanks Emma’s boyfriend.

That night, Tom waits outside of the Northmoor facility and tails Bennett as he leaves. He notices that he’s being followed by two Northmoor agents and pulls over to a rest stop. They follow him into a bathroom, but Tom sneaks out, destroys their car. Tom drives after Bennett, pulls him over and smashes Bennett’s personal driver into the dashboard. He holds Bennett at gunpoint, but he doesn’t kill him since he is unsure about whether or not Bennett is responsible. He leaves.

The next day, Tom meets with the contact, Melissa (Caterina Scorsone). Melissa tells Tom that Northmoor was doing something illegal, which Emma stumbled upon. Emma went to a lawyer and the Massachusetts State Senator. Neither helped her. Emma turned to Melissa and explained the situation so Melissa got her in contact with the activists. All of the activists except the leader died and Melissa went into hiding after the incident. Melissa tells Tom the name of the lawyer and then gives him a pair of DVDs meant for Tom from Emma. She tells Tom that Emma thought she was poisoned as she steps out of the car and is instantly hit by a car. The driver does a u-turn to try and kill Tom when he tries to help Melissa. Tom shoots at the car repeatedly until he kills the driver. He takes Melissa to the hospital. The doctors stabilize her but are forced to amputate her legs. Emma’s boyfriend is found dead in his apartment later that day.

Tom pays Jedburgh a visit and tells him about what happened. He reveals that Emma was poisoned and after a question and answer game, Tom thanks him for not killing him as well. Jedburgh waves him off and goes to a hospital. It’s clear that Jedburgh is dying of cancer, and this will be his last job.

Bennett meets with Moore to discuss the situation. Bennett tells Moore that he did have Emma poisoned in a way which left evidence. Moore is pissed and Bennett tells him that he’s good enough to clean up his own mess without relying on Moore. Bennett mentions that Tom is a problem and that he has order him to be taken care of. At Emma’s apartment, he uses the Geiger counter on Emma’s food and finds that her milk was spiked with radioactive material.

Tom finds the lawyer Emma consulted and confirms that he knows the Lawyer gave Northmoor and the Senator a heads up about Emma’s breach of contract and knowledge of the fact that she was letting activists into the nuclear facility. Tom tells the lawyer that if he doesn’t get a meeting with the Senator, he will tell the media about how his daughter was poisoned by Northmoor and that the lawyer did not inform her of the fact he works for Northmoor. He leaves the lawyer, goes to his car and checks up on the DVDs Melissa gave him. In the video, Emma tells her father that she knows she will die soon. She tells him that she lead the activists in since they were making nuclear weapons which would look like terrorist dirty bombs (implying a government conspiracy). Tom is horrified. He decides to drive around and notices a tail.

The next day, he goes to visit the Senator and is given immediate access. The Senator claims no knowledge of dealing with Emma, and then Tom shows him the photos of Emma’s corpse and the three dead activists. He tells the Senator that now is the time to pick a side or go down when the conspiracy is revealed to the public. He drives away.

That night, the tails continue follow Tom. He backs up his car into their grille and then arrests them, claiming they hit his car. He then gets them for having automatic weapons in their car. They tell them they’ll collect him in 24 hours. Tom tells them to fuck themselves and drives them to the precinct with several other cops.

Tom goes home and begins to feel sick. He realizes that he is going to die of radiation poisoning. His former partner, Whitehouse, shows up and tries to talk to Tom, but Tom realizes why he is there. The two tails arrive and knock Tom out while Whitehouse leaves Tom ashamed. When Tom wakes up, he is in Northmoor’s nuclear facility. He breaks out, steals a car and drives home. He grabs his gun and decides to drive to Bennett’s house to end things.

Tom arrives at Bennett’s house and shoots the first of the two Tails. The second one comes down the stairs and Tom shoots him in the legs several times. Tom realizes that this is the man who shot his daughter and forces him to yell “CRAVEN” to confirm it. He then shoots the man several times in the face. Bennett shoots Tom in the chest several times, but Tom tackles Bennett and pulls out the radioactive milk. He forces it down Bennett’s throat and collapses. Bennett runs to his cabinet to get pills to counteract the radioactivity but Tom drags himself over and shoots Bennett in the face saying “Deep Down, You Know You Deserve This.”

Tom is hospitalized for the gunshot wounds and radioactive poisoning. Jedburgh meets with Moore, the Senator and a political advisor. He listens to their suggestions as to how to play the Northmoor incident in a positive light. He tells them that he is done and then suggests an assassination attempt on the Senator should be the feature story, to drive Bennett’s death out of the tabloids. They are happy to go along with the story until they see Jedburgh pull out his gun. He shoots all three dead within a minute before a young police officer comes in. Jedburgh asks if the young man has a family and kids. The young man says yes and Jedburgh lowers his gun, only to be shot in the heart by the nervous cop.

As Tom lies dying in the hospital, we see a hallucination of Emma by his bedside. Across town, a young reporter opens a letter from Tom with the DVDs revealing the conspiracy with Tom’s “Good Luck” wishes. As he dies, Emma comforts him. The two then leave the hospital together and walk out into white light.
Cast

* Mel Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a homicide detective for the Boston Police Department.[1] Gibson is a fan of the television series, and the film marks his first starring role since 2002's We Were Soldiers and Signs.[2] Gibson attended a gun club with two policemen to improve his marksmanship for the film.[3]
* Ray Winstone as Darius Jedburgh, a CIA officer sent to cover up the murder.[4] Robert De Niro had been cast in the role,[1][5] but he walked out just after he arrived to begin shooting, due to creative differences.[6]
* Danny Huston as Jack Bennett, a shady businessman.[5]
* Bojana Novakovic plays Emma Craven, Thomas' murdered daughter.[5]
* Shawn Roberts plays David Burnham, her boyfriend.[5]
* Gbenga Akinnagbe plays Darcy Jones, a detective in Thomas' squad.[7]