Martin Campbell Interview, Edge of Darkness

MoviesOnline caught up recently with director Martin Campbell who spoke with us in Los Angeles about his new thriller, “Edge of Darkness,” starring Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone and Danny Huston. The film is a remake of Campbell’s original BBC mini-series about a Boston homicide detective, Thomas Craven, who sets out to solve the mystery behind his daughter’s violent death. In the process, he uncovers a vast conspiracy at the highest levels of our government.

For Campbell, revisiting the film’s characters and themes after two decades presented an exciting challenge. “Just as it did years ago, I thought that the heartfelt story of a man losing his daughter, and going off after revenge, could just really capture an audience today.”

The New Zealand native most recently directed the hugely successful James Bond adventure “Casino Royale,” that introduced Daniel Craig in the role of Bond. Prior to that, he re-teamed with Antonio Banderas on “The Legend of Zorro,” the sequel to their 1998 hit “The Mask of Zorro,” which starred Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones and earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

Martin Campbell is a terrific director and we really appreciated his time. Here’s more of what he had to tell us about his suspenseful new film:

Q: What were your preconceptions when you saw the screenplay and how closely do these sync up?

MC: I think very closely. There’s not a great deal of action in it, but we designed the action so rather like a car crash, most violent acts come out of nowhere. They simply happen in the blink of an eye. You never quite know exactly what happened and that was the principal of this, really. So that was a decision that we took.

Q: Did this movie remake feel familiar or totally new?

MC: Well, like Mel approached the acting, he didn’t watch the series and neither did I. I simply forgot the series and treated it as a new movie. I think it was the only way to go about it.

Q: Is it more political thriller than film noir?

MC: No, I think it’s much more about loss. It’s about grief and it’s about retribution. It’s all of those things. I think the political story is the least interesting of the elements in the film.

Q: Who came up with the last scene? Was it Bill Monahan, the screenwriter?

MC: Oddly enough, we had a slightly different ending to the film and it just wasn’t comfortable. It didn’t work and in fact Mel said to me, “This is not working. It doesn’t feel right” and so forth. We discussed it and he said to me, “Well, why don’t we put it in the hospital, in the hospital corridor?” That’s precisely what we did, so that’s where that came from. There’s also another scene which is, I think, one of the best scenes in the movie which is the flashback scene to the little girl and the shaving scene. Well, I have to say that was entirely Mel’s idea. It wasn’t mine and that was a scene that Mel improvised with the little girl. We shot it in two or three hours, I think. It’s probably my favorite scene in the movie, or certainly one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

Q: Regardless of whether you revisited the series or not, were you hesitant to revisit a past success?

MC: No, it all depended on the script. The idea of a father who’s lost his only daughter and sets out on a voyage of discovery, I always thought that was a great story. To be honest, it was simply a matter of the script coming right. Andrew Bovell did a terrific job, the first writer, but Bill Monahan took it to the finish line. I could put the series out of my mind and it was a very good script so I had no hesitation.

“Edge of Darkness” opens in theaters on January 29^th.