Edge of Darkness

There is very little that I can add to the other reviews. Only this: one of the beautiful things about seeing this in series form was that you had to wait week to week to see it so that you could ponder what happened and what might happen. Very exciting. And, once it was over, it was a marvel to re-watch it and see how well it "hung together." Especially the hushed conversations that were blown through the first time around when you were uncertain who various people were. And by focusing on them and their role the show was even more fascinating the second time around; you understand better and understand more. As one reviewer wrote, it has the texture of a book, and that is a remarkable thing.

The convoluted story does not so much develop as evolve through a series of stages. To begin with, it is a murder mystery. Then it becomes a political thriller. Then a spy movie. Next, an action piece. Finally, it unwinds in an existential meditation on life and death. Its politics are bit leftward-leaning, and there is a whole anti-nuke, "environmental message" thing ultimately worked in at the end, but the writing is skillful enough to rise above mere rhetoric and take Edge of Darkness into the realm of art.

The performances by Bob Peck, Joanne Whalley, and a host of familiar BBC faces are uniformly excellent. Even Joe Don Baker is good as the American CIA agent Darius Jedburgh (or "Jed-borough", as a Scottish character calls him). As an American, I am always amused by the stereotypes other cultures have of us. Viewed through British (or in director Martin Campbell's case, Australasian) eyes, Jedburgh becomes a roguish gunslinger in white, having apparently just stepped out of the same silver screen occupied by John Wayne and Randolph Scott. Baker is game, playing the "cowboy" angle to the hilt. (He would later perform similar duty in the Campbell-directed James Bond film Goldeneye). It is encouraging that he is ultimately a good guy, despite the "taint" of Reagan/Thatcher politics.

The late Bob Peck is the real standout, though. I cannot imagine anyone else playing the role of detective Ron Craven, whose shattering personal journey gives Edge of Darkness its soul. His performance is completely authentic as he embodies a man who has lost everything, whose only reason for going on is to bring justice to those who murdered his daughter. We have seen this sort of thing before, of course, but rarely realized with such verisimilitude. We sense that if such things really happened as depicted in Edge of Darkness, they would happen pretty much they way they're shown.

It's a shame that Peck was not better utilized in those big, slick, (though often hollow) films that we make in this country. Most Americans will remember him, if they think of him at all, as the Australian hunter in Jurassic Park. His big line, spoken just before becoming a velociraptor's lunch, was "Clever girl!" He managed to invest those two words with subtle shades of dread and admiration, as his character briefly contemplated the brutal speed with which his own mortality was upon him.

Edge of Darkness will leave you feeling pretty much the same way.