cosmicly

Michelle Pfeiffer once commented that "the Music adds 50% to a Movie." If you do the math, that means that about one-third of the Movie experience is comprised of the Music.

Although this film takes quite a few risks, the choice of Music is not at all risky, but rather consists of some tried and true classics: tunes immortalized by the Eurythmics, Roxy Music, Queen, the Beatles, the Smiths, Sugarcubes, Jefferson Airplane and Iggy Pop--plus some Mozart.

A pleasant twist includes performances of some of the songs by cast members Emily Browning and Carla Gugino.

Otherwise, the formula for the film is a fairly straightforward "Video Game" theme with the usual array of young and hot female action heroines: three with the "Skinny Blonde Look" that everyone in Hollywood loves (Emily Browning, Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish) and two with the currently popular "Exotic Raven-Haired" beauty (Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung).

So check it out if you like the Music, if you like Video Games, and if you like hot women in the roles of action heroines.

In Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, the writer describes a scale of human activity with the "Man of Consciousness" at one extreme and the "Man of Action" at the other extreme. A striking example of the "Man of Action" is the historically arrogant and self-obsessed Napoleon, who focused on results without regard to ethics or morality or even any meaningful significance beyond glory and self-aggrandizement.

In Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson plays a hard nosed Boston cop whose daughter has been viciously murdered and he reacts as the ultimate "Man of Action," an Avenging Angel with no pretense of Justice, or "just doing his job." He is hell bent on revenge for the murder of his only child, and he is--in today's terms of constant overstatement and habitual exaggeration-- completely Off the Scale; on a scale of 1 to 10 he is at least a 12 or 13 in his determination and focus.

Action oriented males will not rank this performance by Mel Gibson on a par with the Mad Max or Lethal Weapon heroics; and swooning females will certainly not find this performance as sexy as Braveheart. But for sheer determination and raw power, Thomas Craven ranks side by side with the finest performances of Mel Gibson's career.

And a truly extraordinary job by Ray Winstone as Darius Jedburgh amplifies the impact of this highly underrated movie.

For those who find the plot and portrayals as too "over the top" and overdone, I would simply pose this question: If you had a wonderful child, an only child, a loving child, who was gunned down in a murder that was either totally senseless or diabolically conspiratorial, how would you react? Honestly, what would you REALLY do?