After a few years in exile, Mel Gibson is back. The big beard is gone, the religious rhetoric is out, and the anti-Semitic rants are behind closed doors. Mel is back on the big screen killing bad guys where he belongs. Controversy has been replaced by the smell of buttery popcorn once again. The actor’s latest movie Edge Of Darkness is by no means a classic, but it’s exactly the type of dark violent thriller that Gibson used to specialize in. Whether or not mass audiences will be willing to embrace the former superstar once again remains to be seen, but the guy is clearly trying to get back in their good graces.

In this dark political revenge thriller Gibson stars as a straight-laced police officer whose happy reunion with his daughter is interrupted when a masked assailant emerges from a black van to shoot down the young girl. At first it’s assumed that the bullet was meant for Mel, but he knows better and sets out on a quest to discover the cause of his daughter’s murder. Through an increasingly complex and convoluted plot it turns out that the girl worked for a secretive nuclear research facility responsible for providing high-powered weapons to some rather unsavory characters. The scope of this conspiracy seems to get wider with each passing moment and by the end only Mel and his trusty 9mm can bring the villains to justice.

The plot might sound like a political commentary masked as a revenge thriller, but that’s not really the case. The 1985 British mini-series of the same title may have slipped some commentary between the gunfire, but in this feature film version it’s little more than just window dressing. To condense the story down to two hours the villains have been reduced to stock characters: the aging hitman who discovers his conscience, the corrupt governor, the evil slimly businessman, the super-secret government official, etc. The characters are painted in very broad strokes and the plot has been done to death. But that said, stories like this have been told so many times for a reason: they work. This is a classic revenge story where we spend the entire movie desperately wanting the hero to kill the villains he chases and then feel slightly dirty when it happens. Edge Of Darkness won’t win any awards for originality, but it does provide the kind of dark, violent, star-driven thriller that has been sadly absent from screens for a little while.

Aside from Gibson, the cast boasts few recognizable faces and those that we do know are oddly British. Ray Winstone pops up as a mysterious “cleaner” (think Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction) and is his usual impossibly cool and intimidating self. Danny Huston plays his standard evil upper class Brit in a business suit and does it well. The reason for the English faces is mostly likely due to director Martin Campbell who helmed the original BBC mini-series, but is best known for revitalizing the James Bond franchise twice with Goldeneye and Casino Royale. The latter Bond flick was highly regarded for it’s realism and that’s about the level of realism that Edge Of Darkness is pitched at as well. There’s a grittiness to the proceedings that gives the illusion of reality, but ultimately it’s still a movie of highly choreographed set pieces, stock characters, and one central role custom made for a movie star.