Edge of Darkness

First published on 27 Jan 2010. Updated on 7 Feb 2010.

New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell has a good track record when it comes to tricky comebacks. In 1995 he was handed the reins of GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan's successful debut as James Bond. A decade later he ushered in Daniel Craig's 007 with Casino Royale and delivered not only a massive hit, but one of the very best Bond movies ever. 

His latest assignment also returns a popular action hero to the big screen, albeit one whose continuing popularity is less of a foregone conclusion. Mel Gibson hasn't starred in a movie since 2002's Signs. He's been busy directing his own: The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. While Mel's well-publicised anti-Semitic comments to the officer who arrested him for drunk driving in 2006 did not prevent Apocalypto from being a hit, it remains to be seen whether audiences are ready to accept him as a leading man again. 

Does Campbell consider his star to be damaged goods at all? "People do say that," the director says on the phone from the New Orleans set of his next film, Green Lantern. "My argument is that Mel, short of jumping off a cliff, I don't know how he could apologise more. We've all been drunk and we've all said things we don't mean. It makes me very angry the way he's been treated. I don't think he's had a drop of drink from that day to this."

Edge of Darkness offers Gibson the kind of sympathetic role that has been his stock-in-trade since Mad Max in 1978: that of a reasonable man pushed to the edge and out for revenge. Thomas Craven is a Boston police detective whose 24-year-old daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down outside his home. Craven suspects she's the unwitting victim of a revenge attack by one of the crims he's collared in the past. But his investigations lead to the commercial nuclear facility where Emma was interning just prior to her murder. The ante is upped when a shadowy UK operative, Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), contacts Craven and further witnesses start being knocked off.

Scripted by William Monahan (The Departed) and Australia's Andrew Bovell (Lantana), the film is a remake of the 1985 BBC series that Campbell himself directed to great acclaim. "We've been quietly developing it as a film since 2000 and then Mel became available, so we did it," the director says.

Widely thought of as one of the best TV shows ever produced, the original Edge of Darkness used the thriller genre to attack the nuclear policies of Margaret Thatcher, who strengthened Britain's nuclear arsenal and permitted American nuclear missiles to be stationed on British soil. "There are things that go on with the American government with the black ops that are tied up to private corporations either developing or manufacturing weapons," says Campbell. "So the movie takes the same story point as the series does, but it takes a different path."

If Campbell had any concerns that his leading man would be a little rusty, they were allayed from day one of shooting. "He just stepped up as though he'd never given up acting at all. He's very directable, Mel, I have to say." Not bossy? "He actually said to me ‘I'm not a director, I'm not a producer, I'm just the actor.'"

Gibson, Campbell says, brings the right sense of weight to a character burdened with grief and guilt. "Bill Holden, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, all these great actors who had such weight - they just don't exist anymore. Mel is one of the few who has that sort of gravitas and honesty." Campbell also applauds the ‘edginess' of upcoming Sydney performer Novokovic, who can thank Gibson for her big break. "The point is, we didn't have a lot of money for casting. Once you pay for Mel Gibson, there's not a lot left! So what you look for are fine actors who will do it for the budget you have. And Bojana did it perfectly."

Campbell, an energetic 70, also has the two Mask of Zorro films to his credit, but says that he fell into the action genre by accident. "I just like entertaining movies - I don't think I'd be any good at Chekhov." Is he a man of action himself? "Absolutely not! I'm always so busy prepping or filming. Well, I did do [mountain climbing thriller] Vertical Limit in 2000, where we went to the alps in New Zealand. And it was a bloody nightmare actually." Nick Dent