-By Rex Roberts

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Edge of Darkness is a condensation of the 1985 BBC miniseries of the same name, but this latest Mel Gibson vehicle, the actor’s first starring role in seven years, is better described as a conflation of Casino Royale and The Departed…diabolical international intrigue with a Boston accent. Directed by Martin Campbell, who helmed the Bond film, from a screenplay by William Monahan, who scripted the Scorsese hit, the movie doesn’t stop at spooks and cops.  These belt-and-suspenders filmmakers give us melodrama, mystery and murder most foul, enlivened by global terrorism, political and corporate corruption, plus a little old-fashioned betrayal. We are treated to photogenic locations spanning the state of Massachusetts from Beacon Hill to the Berkshires, painted in autumn colors and populated with cops talking Southie and senators speaking Eastie. And we haven’t even gotten to Gibson and his evocation of the Righteous Vigilante, or his entertaining co-stars, Ray Winstone as the Cockney Fixer and Danny Huston as the Bent Brahmin.

Gibson plays Tom Craven, a homicide detective with the Boston police department whose daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), is shot dead on his front porch. The cops believe the bullet was meant for their colleague, but Craven has good reason to suspect perfidy. He embarks on an unofficial investigation into her killing that leads him to his daughter’s employer, an enigmatic government contractor that, we slowly discover, is up to a whole lot of no good. Craven finds himself unraveling an extraordinarily complicated conspiracy involving environmental activists, covert operatives, and the usual suspects hungry for money and power (no sex, please, this is a family movie).

The distinguished crew of Edge of Darkness (production designer Tom Sanders, costume designer Lindy Hemming, editor Stuart Baird, composer Howard Shore and producer Graham King have won or been nominated for Oscars, as has Monahan) ensure that the film moves along smartly when not pausing to be, well, moving, although it offers nothing new or clever by way of story or style. The original BAFTA-winning six-part series has been adapted for American audiences and updated to reference current events, but no one will be surprised or titillated by the familiar twists and turns of the plot.

What keeps us watching are the diverting turns by Gibson, Winstone and Huston, who take their performances to the edge of parody. Winstone plays a mysterious bloke with the improbable name Darius Jedburgh, a world-weary assassin who seems able to pull the strings of powerful puppets in Congress and (one supposes) the Firm. He speaks with an East End accent (if that’s what it is) but quotes Greek philosophers, a poet-warrior if there ever was one. Huston takes the polar opposite approach to Jack Bennett, CEO of Northmoor, the evil corporation, playing him as the epitome of the effete, affectless WASP…a New Yorker cartoon come to life.

Gibson, who must make us believe in his grief as well as his anger, can’t camp it up like Winstone and Bennett. He doesn’t have to, possessing that movie-star quality that makes him, as Boston tough guys might say, “laahge.” He gets us rooting for Craven when the gruff-but-sensitive father-turned-avenger takes matters into his own fists. Yes, the storyline borders on the incomprehensible (Monahan repeatedly has his characters wonder at the complexity of the whole business), but it doesn’t matter. No one watching Edge of Darkness will sweat the details; we’re here to ride the cinematic loop-de-loop.