Plot
At South Station, Boston, homicide detective Thomas Craven picks up his daughter Emma, who comes home to visit. On the car ride and at home, Emma feels increasingly unwell, vomiting and suffering a nosebleed. When they step outside the house to go to a hospital, a masked gunman shouts "Craven!" and opens fire with a shotgun, hitting Emma. Craven attends to his daughter, who dies in his arms.
While formally identifying Emma's body, Craven takes a lock of her hair as a memento, then returns to duty to help find out who wanted to kill him. Upon discovering a .45 pistol in Emma's nightstand, he starts to suspect that Emma was the gunman's target, not him. The gun's ownership leads him to David, her boyfriend. David is fearful of Northmoor, a weapons company that employs him and Emma, and refuses to talk, only giving Craven Emma's apartment key. In Emma's apartment, Craven finds a Geiger counter and later discovers her hair is radioactive.
Craven visits Jack Bennett, Northmoor's CEO. Northmoor leases a research and development facility from the U.S. government. Bennett claims the firm is working on clean nuclear energy, but refuses to go into detail. He inquires rudely about Craven's feelings after Emma's death.
Craven repeatedly has visions of Emma's past, including short conversations, typically as the happy young child he remembers and loves. As he burns Emma's clothing in his backyard, Craven finds Jedburgh, a British "consultant". Jedburgh was tasked with tying up loose ends related to Emma, including her father. However, Jedburgh takes a liking to Craven, and lets him live.
One of Emma's activist friends, who is nearly killed by a Northmoor agent, reveals to Craven that Bennett ordered Emma's murder, as well as those of the other activists that aided her in investigating Northmoor. The company has been manufacturing nuclear weapons using foreign designs. The weapons were intended to be linked with foreign nations if they were used by the United States as dirty bombs.
Craven confronts U.S. Senator Jim Pine, who was contacted earlier by Emma, revealing that Craven knows almost everything that happened.
After examining Emma's fridge with the Geiger counter, Craven discovers that her milk is radioactive. Craven also falls sick. He is abducted by Northmoor agents, and wakes up handcuffed to a gurney in the Northmoor facility, but manages to escape. His health deteriorating from radiation poisoning, Craven heads to Bennett's house, and kills the Northmoor agents after forcing one of them at gunpoint to shout "Craven", finally identifying him as Emma's killer. Bennett shoots and wounds Craven, but Craven also wounds Bennett and forces some of the radioactive milk down his throat. Bennett attempts to take some pills to counteract the radioactivity, but Craven tells Bennett he deserves what's coming to him and fatally shoots him.
Jedburgh meets with the Senator and two political advisers who had hired him. They want to spin the Northmoor incident in a positive light. Jedburgh suggests that portraying it as an assassination attempt on the Senator could be an angle to keep Bennett's death out of the headlines. They are pleased with this idea until Jedburgh abruptly kills both advisers and the senator. When a young police officer nervously enters the Senator's room, Jedburgh asks the officer at gunpoint if he has children. When the officer replies yes, Jedburgh lowers his gun, allowing the officer to shoot him dead.
A young reporter for the local TV station, who had spoken to Craven a few nights earlier, opens a letter from him which contains DVDs recorded by Emma revealing the conspiracy. As Craven dies in the hospital, the spirit of Emma comforts him. The ghosts of Craven and Emma are then shown walking down the corridor toward a bright, white light.
Production
In 2002, Martin Campbell announced that he was planning to adapt Edge of Darkness for the cinema. [11] Active development began in early 2007 when Campbell met with producer Graham King, who first enlisted Australian playwright Andrew Bovell to write, and then William Monahan (fresh from winning an Academy Award for King's The Departed ) to re-write the screenplay. [12] Michael Wearing and BBC Films also co-produced the film. [4] [7]
Filming began on 18 August 2008 in Boston, Massachusetts. [5] A scene where Craven scatters his daughter's ashes at a beach was filmed at Rockport on 25 and 26 September. [13] They shot some scenes in Merrimac, Massachusetts from 15 September 2008 to 18 September 2008. Additional scenes were shot in Malden, Massachusetts in the old Malden hospital. Some of the final scenes were shot at a home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Additionally, Gibson and his crew set up shop for filming in western Massachusetts, with 180 staff staying in Northampton hotels. They shot in various locations in the Pioneer Valley, including Tully O'Reilly's Pub, the Northampton Athletic Club, and an older part of the Hampshire County Courthouse, all in Northampton. Also, Sugarloaf Mountain was shut down for a few days while they rented it out. [14] They also filmed at the Notch Visitor Center, Rt. 116, Amherst, and right across the street from the Visitor Center, buried in Bare Mountain, The Notch Cold War Bunker stood in for the main entrance of the Northmoor facility.
The film takes place in America, unlike the television series, which was based in England. "The idea was to transfer the story to a different time and place rather than just repeat what we did in England," Campbell said. "Boston seemed like the perfect location because it does have a whole English, Irish signature on it." [15] The film was originally scored by classical composer John Corigliano. However, the decision was made during postproduction (after Corigliano's score had been recorded and dubbed) to replace his score with a new one by Howard Shore.
