Say what you will about Crazy Mel–and you can say most anything–but the man is a good actor, no matter what you put him in.  Though he does always seem to wind up in cop dramas, and that’s exactly what he’ll be hitting today with Edge of Darkness.

Detective Tom Craven is a doting father and a dedicated police officer who lives by a handful of very simple rules.  Do the best you can by your family, speak your mind, go to work every day, and never take anything from the bad guys–this is Tom’s guiding light.  So when his daughter comes home for a visit, he’s pretty happy about the whole thing until she’s shot on his front porch. Now, Tom’s left with nothing to lose and a whole lot of unanswered questions, and will show us the lengths one angry cop will go to when he’s sufficiently provoked.

This is actually based on a BBC series, so chances are it’ll be completely new to most everybody.  The good part about this, of course, is that it won’t matter, because the movie will stand on its own merits.

Frankly, I think the biggest thing this movie can do is not to serve as a wakeup call for corrupt corporate interests but rather as a wakeup call to change the grading system on Rotten Tomatoes.  A six out of ten, which is what this movie’s averaging over there, shouldn’t be considered “bad” (or in their words, rotten).  It should be considered “pretty good”, which is exactly what Edge of Darkness is.

Sure, there are some plot points in here that feel downright tacked on like the whole nuclear arms thing, and there are some parts that feel rather pointless, like Tom’s hallucinations.  And there are some parts that just plain old don’t make any sense at all, like how Jedburgh’s hallucinations figure into ANYTHING that’s going on here.

But what we have is a marginally effective noirish thriller that does a pretty fair job of exhibiting Gibson’s far from inconsiderable talent and even throws in a few good shocks.

There’s absolutely no reason to see this in a theater, though–it WILL make a nice popcorn flick for your home theater, however, so bear that in mind.

The Screenhead Ten Scale agrees on a limited level with Rotten Tomatoes and would give it a 5.8 out of ten if it could, but instead prefers to deal with round numbers.  Thus, it gives Edge of Darkness a six out of ten for being slightly better than the average but still having a few problems that keep this from being really worth seeing.