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The Edge of Insanity
by Richard Horgan |
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10/4/2008 at 10:06:42 AM |
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What could possibly have possessed Martin Campbell (pictured below), director of the James Bond films Casino Royale and GoldenEye, when he decided to guide a feature film remake of the beloved six-episode 1985 BBC-TV series Edge of Darkness that he made at the outset of his career? Not to mention with Mel Gibson, in his first onscreen role since 2003’s The Singing Detective, stepping into the shoes of original actor Bob Peck?
That’s what fans of the TV series about a homicide detective investigating the death of his daughter have been asking ever since the project was announced by producer Graham King, and that’s what they continue to ask as the feature film version currently rolls in and around Boston. Wrote one admirer of the BBC original earlier this year: “This remake is the single worst news ever. It’s the film equivalent of finding blood on your toilet paper.” Definitely not the quote you will see in any of the 2009 feature’s promotional materials.
Granted, King has relocated the serpentine drama to Boston and brought in as a co-writer William Monahan, the Oscar winning screenwriter of King’s 2006 Best Picture The Departed. But then he lost Robert De Niro as a co-star after a single day of Massachusetts moviemaking, and though the Internet was rife with rumors that it had something to do with tensions between Bob and Mel, it appears actually to have been more of a director-actor creative differences rift.
How strange that after tampering with the beloved 1986 BBC-TV series The Singing Detective back in 2003, Gibson is back for more of the same via a redo of the “Beeb”’s 1985 show. And who would have thunk that some five years later, it would be Gibson’s troubled Detective co-star Robert Downey Jr. ruling the summer blockbuster box office (and fall Blu-ray DVD stats)?
While Gibson most likely did not have a stack of scripts to choose from for his comeback attempt, surely he could have found something with less built in fan resistance. The quote referenced above is typical of the overall feeling among BBC show supporters; they cannot believe that the program is being revisited. (Edge of Darkness was nominated for 11 BAFTA TV Awards, the UK’s equivalent of the Emmy, and won six including those for Best Drama Series and Best Actor.)
Maybe Campbell was trying to curry favor with fans of the original by replacing De Niro with British actor Ray Winstone, in sort of a flip of the original (in that case, the late American actor Joe Don Baker* co-starred opposite Peck). But though producer King has made some mighty movie gambles over the years, and likely has a sneaky handle on Gibson’s current drawing power in foreign markets, Edge of Darkness on paper looks likely to be about as well received as the last couple of films offered up by Gibson’s old Signs pal M. Night Shyamalan.
A much more bankable Gibson return would have been a Lethal Weapon 5 in which the crazy character of Riggs has been kicked off the police force because of an anti-Semitic tirade.
*Correction - 10/20/08: Groesbeck, Texas native Baker is still very much alive and well, at the current age of 72. Apologies for the mix-up.
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