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Edge of Darkness

This movie felt weird for a long time, in the sense that my feelings constantly fluctuated between liking it and disliking it. Overall I enjoyed a little more than not.

Structure/Plot

- One thing I hate is when a character in a movie does not realize something that the audience has already figured out. Here, it’s the hook of Mel Gibson’s daughter getting shot and him thinking for the rest of Act I that the shooter intended to kill him and missed. How could he think differently than me (and, I assume, many others) when his daughter came home out of the blue, became ill in a sudden and mysterious manner, said something to him on their way out the door along the lines of “I should’ve told you…”, and the shooter nailed her dead-on…from close range, he couldn’t have missed Mel by so much and, by accident, hit her perfectly. In other words, the set-up needed to omit much of these hints and clues and then we would’ve discovered things at the same pace as Mel.

- Why did Mel secretly investigate his daughter’s death? He was a cop, he should’ve acted with a partner and the department’s full resources! That told me the story would’ve worked better had Mel not been a cop. It had the feel of a revenge/justice movie, yet that angle only came up at the end when Mel blew away the private security guys and head of Northmoor .

- When the private security guys showed up at Mel’s house after his cop-friend was revealed to be in on it, why did they stun him and not kill him? Why did they bring him back to Northmoor? It wasn’t to expose him to radiation since he was already poisoned at that point and it wasn’t to learn what he knew because they already knew everything. That was a very weak moment.

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