Screen legend and icon Mel Gibson will make his first appearance in front of cameras in six years in Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness.
Casino Royale director Campbell originally directed the 1985 BBC miniseries on which the film is based. The Departed scripter William Monahan has penned the script.
Variety reports that:
“Gibson will play a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed. He plunges into the case and uncovers systemic corruption that led to his daughter’s death.”
There are many differing opinions of Mel Gibson out there, some dislike his politics and religious beliefs, while others feel that he is a forceful screen presence and a first rate leading man.
What do I think? Read on.
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I’m in the latter camp, and I feel that we need Mel Gibson back on the big-screen, just to show us what a real A-list actor is like.
Even if we don’t take into account his films as director - except maybe Braveheart (one of my all time favorites), Gibson has given cinema two of the most iconic characters of the last 30 years - Martin Riggs and Mad Max and delivered many strong performances in a wide range of films.
Early Australian roles showed range and strong acting skills, but it was his arrival in Hollywood that brought out the leading man. Filled with charm, good looks and a humility he is one of the few stars in Hollywood to be fully accepted by both men and women.
At the start of this decade (and century) Gibson was on a roll, making his two most successful films: Signs (one of his strongest and nuanced performances) and What Women Want (a first rate romantic comedy) showing that audiences weren’t tiring of his aging good looks.
Despite controversy in his private life, he has also shown that he is a skilled director, producer and humanitarian - seriously - if it wasn’t for Gibson you wouldn’t be seeing Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr this weekend. Gibson helped out Downey Jr when he was at his lowest ebb with his drug problems.
Whatever your belief, I’m over the moon that Mel Gibson is returning to where he belongs - on the silver screen.
Let’s just hope that at some point in the near future he re-teams with Richard Donner and George Miller.
Edge of Darkness starts shooting in Boston in August. No release date has been set.
Source: Variety
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6 Comments
What’s original about this film “Edge of Darkness”?
Nothing, gheeeshssshshssss Mel if your gonna do a movie at least try to blow my mind.
This sounds like an episode of Crime Story_CSI_Criminal Intent.
What droll crap….right up there with Grand Torino.
Braveheart is a movie that really grates with me. Take a big warrior revolutionary like Wallace and have been played by some aussie midget with a bad accent. Then put in by the numbers good versus evil nonsense, and then leave out any historical accuracy whatsoever.
Great story I heard about making that movie, although no idea if true, is when they were filming the Battle of Stirling Bridge some locals came by and asked why they weren’t filming it where it happened. (notice in the movie it is in a field)
The reply: Well, the bridge got in the way.
The dry response from the locals:
Aye, that’s what the English found!
Mel’s politics and religious beliefs, like all actors, really has no bearing on what I think of their movies. That being said, I find that I usually really enjoy movies that Mel is in. Believe it or not, that also goes for Tom Cruise. Yes, Cruise is a total nutjob, but his movies tend to be very entertaining. I thought the Lethal Weapon films were very entertaining, well-made and iconic. If Mel’s in a movie, much like Harrison Ford, chances are my fanny will be in a seat watching it.
Oh, thank you, thank you. It’s so nice reading that other people find Mel not a monster, but a very gifted actor and a good person. Even though he’s been trashed so much in the media, he’s held his head high - now that’s a class act. Go Mel go!
Niall
I have always been surprised at the one-track mind of those misrepresenting Mr. Gibson’s outburst as ‘proof’ of bigotry. The guy was being unfair, not truthful. Infact you have to believe that people are never unfair or that drunk people are never unfair to consider the type of remark Mr. Gibson made proof that someone’s a bigot. And that itself is a misrepresentation of life. And it was a once in a lifetime event that shouldn’t be misrepresented as the opposite, a characteristic trait. If anyone who had ever been unfair would be called untrustworthy, not a lot of people would pass the test. I don’t think anyone could honestly say they wouldn’t feel attacked if ever arrested, even if the reason is just. He didn’t know for sure the arresting officer was Jewish, but it was about the only likely assumption available at first sight - he didn’t know the man. And alcohol doesn’t just make it easier to speak truths, it can lower our threshold in the exact opposite way and make us become unfair, take a cheapshot when we feel attacked and cornered. Just like alcohol isn’t intelligent enough to effect the functioning of just one leg, it can’t selectively effect the mental standards we apply, it effects our threshold in general, blurs our vision in general and makes us do all sorts of stupid things we normally would not agree with. It might open the lock that normally prevents us from speaking certain truths, it might also do the exact opposite, open the lock that normally prevents us from being unfair. And it is exactly because he does posses a healthy conscience that he felt guilty about it and apologized.
What's your opinion? Leave a comment!