‘Edge of Darkness’  /  3 stars out of 5

‘Dear John’  /  2 1/2 stars out of 5

Upon first glance, the films ‘Edge of Darkness’ and ‘Dear John’ could not be more different. One is a political/revenge thriller starring Mel Gibson and the other is a Nicholas Sparks weepy that features two young, hot actors. But what ties these two together is that both are films designed to provoke specific reactions from a specific audience.

For ‘Edge of Darkness,’ the audience is people –mostly men—who want to see Mel Gibson shoot and punch his way to closure over the death of his daughter. The moments of killing are designed for the audience to get excited, to clap and cheer for the painful deaths of truly horrible bad guys.

For ‘Dear John,’ its audience is people –mostly women– who wish to be genuinely moved to tears by a touching romance. ‘Dear John’s scenes of emotional payoff are consciously constructed to make the audience at least shed a tear or two– maybe even bawl. Elation and sadness are two very important human emotions that can and should be brought about by good movies. Do ‘Edge of Darkness’ and ‘Dear John’ hit their respective emotional targets?

‘Dear John,’ directed by Lasse Hallström, stars Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried as two young lovers whose love life is put on hold by that darn war in Afghanistan. The film begins way back in the 2001 in Charleston, South Carolina, where Tatum’s John Tyree and Seyfried’s Savannah Curtis spark up an innocent romance while he is on leave from the army and she is on spring break from her unnamed college. They promise each other that they will correspond for the whole next year until he returns from duty for good.

Unfortunately for them—and the rest of the country—9/11 occurs and John is nudged into reenlisting for the eminent conflict in Afghanistan. Will John and Savannah survive both spiritually and physically as a couple?

The biggest problem that ‘Dear John’ has is that it is overly manipulative. I have never seen a film so crammed with terror attacks, autism, war, cancer, and other illnesses and yet remain strangely disconnected from reality. Towards the end of the movie, the story crosses the threshold of believability regarding a characther’s illness. I don’t want to give much away, but at that point I stopped believing and caring about the characters and started feeling like I was being played.

Tatum and Seyfried are capable actors, but the story and the dialogue they were given really let them down. At no point in this film was I enjoying the interaction between characters. The only genuinely good performance in the film came from Richard Jenkins, as John’s lonely father.

Once this movie reveals its plot points and one big cry scene, there is nothing else to remember. Nothing stuck out other than the big weepy scene at the end –no spoilers here. But that scene did hit its mark and did elicit tears from the audience—including myself. So if you want a good cry, ‘Dear John’ will at least provide one big one. Other than that, there is nothing here to hold up as special.

Switching from the coast of Charleston to the streets of Boston, ‘Edge of Darkness,’ directed by Martin Campbell, is a remake of a BBC miniseries from the 1980s, which Campbell also directed. The film stars fresh-faced newcomer Mel Gibson as Detective Tom Craven of the Boston police department.

In the first five minutes of the film, we meet his daughter who came to visit him for the weekend. She works for a mysterious company and begins to cough up blood and have strange nosebleeds. As soon as they step foot outside to go to the hospital, a masked man jumps out of a van, yells out “Craven!”, and then guns Craven’s daughter down with a shotgun. At first, Craven believes that he was the intended target but he soon discovers that his daughter was assassinated to keep her quiet about activities at the corporation she worked for. Will Craven uncover the conspiracy and enact his revenge?

‘Edge of Darkness’ turns out to be a combination of political conspiracy thriller and parental revenge thriller. ‘Darkness’ is at its best when it concentrates on Mel giving the bad guys–who are quite villainous– what they deserve.

The film does features a great supporting performance from actor Ray Winstone, who plays a mysterious figure who is either guiding or subverting Mel’s quest for revenge. His character’s ambiguity added much needed depth to an otherwise straightforward storyline.

The scenes with Gibson and Winstone pop and are very fun to watch. Where the movie falls out of its element is when it tries to add bigger scenes of danger. At one point, Gibson is kidnapped by the baddies and then makes his escape from a mysterious lair that would be silly even in a James Bond movie. This scene in particular is useless and brings the movie down.

The score, by one of my favorites Howard Shore, brings some much needed gravitas to a quite typical movie. Like ‘Dear John,’ ‘Edge of Darkness’ also succeeds in delivering its big revenge payback scene. The way that Mel delivers his revenge to the villain is quite clever and is one that I will never forget.

What gives ‘Darkness’ the edge over ‘Dear John,’ is that it at least tries a new angle on its genre by attempting to go beyond just a father’s revenge story. It doesn’t fully succeed, but its efforts are more admirable and memorable than the flaccid, forgettable ‘Dear John.’ Instead of venturing out to the theatre for ‘Dear John’ I recommend re-watching ‘The Notebook’ or renting John Carney’s film ‘Once’ which is a touching, realistic portrayal of a modern day romance– with music!

If you want to wait to see ‘Edge of Darkness’ when it comes out on DVD—which I recommend—in the meantime, you should rent ‘Taken’ or Mel Gibson’s ‘Payback.’ Both feature stories of dangerous men on quests for bloody revenge and are superior to the admirable, but average ‘Edge of Darkness.’