A strange, gloomy detective thriller

The strange and gloomy Edge of Darkness is Mel Gibson's first job in front of a camera since M. Night Shyamalan's UFO nuttiness, 2002's Signs. The fact that the wild-eyed movie star looks considerably worse for wear - his rugged mug crosshatched and grooved, his scowl severe - could certainly be attributed (if one discounts all those tabloid headlines) to the role at hand: Gibson is Tom Craven, a Boston Police Department detective who has just witnessed his twentysomething daughter being blown away.

A thriller that mixes elements of Mystic River (working-class Boston, a father torn apart by the death of his girl), Silkwood (radiation contamination, whistle-blowing), and over-the-top Bond villainy (Danny Huston, oily and artificially tanned), Edge of Darkness feels more than a little like a '70s throwback. The pace is languorous, the volume (with the exception of three or four jolting episodes of violence) low, the lighting dim and grim.

So Craven, a longtime widower comfortable in his lonely regimens, welcomes his daughter for a visit. They haven't been communicating much, even though she lives just a hundred or so miles across the state, and he senses there's something more going on here than just a casual weekend at home. But before Emma (Bojana Novakovic) has a chance to share her worries, she's dead. The two are standing on the front porch when a car rolls by, the shooter shouts "Craven!" and she goes flying back into the house, her torso a big, bloody hole.

The cops think the killers were targeting Tom - payback for some old arrest, an old conviction. And that's what he thinks, too. But then he discovers curious objects among Emma's effects: a handgun, a Geiger counter. And objects - namely, her personal computer - gone missing.

So the detective is on the case. And on the path of revenge and retribution.