Probably the biggest release of this week is the trailer for “Edge of Darkness,” the new action/thriller starring Mel Gibson. The trailer is incredibly cliché- you pretty much know that as soon as Gibson says “You’re my girl” to his daughter, he’s handing down a death sentence. With films like “Apocalypto,” “The Passion of the Christ,” and uh, “What Women Want” I had almost forgotten that Gibson made his name as an action star, so this may mark a return (albeit a fairly tepid-looking one) to the genre for him. Despite the mediocre trailer, I’ll probably still probably tune in to watch Mel avenge his daughter and thoroughly mangle a Boston accent.
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One the more neo-noir end of the crime thriller spectrum is “The Missing Person,” starring Michael Shannon as an alcoholic private eye hired to find a man and bring him back to his wife in New York. The trailer looks avant-garde, to say the least, but I like the visual style of it and I’m a sucker for any noir with a witty and acerbic detective. Will it be the next “Chinatown” or “L.A. Confidential?” I highly doubt it, but it still looks worth catching.
The last trailer of note for this week is “Up in the Air,” which I initially wrote off as a standard romantic comedy riding on the star power of George Clooney. When I actually looked at the trailer, I was surprised to see that it was directed by Jason Reitman, of “Juno” and “Thank you for Smoking” fame, and appears to include J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis in the cast. That doesn’t mean it will be a great movie, but it should be enough to placate the countless boyfriends and husbands who will be forced to sit through this. Also, this trailer marks what I suspect is the 1,000th time Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” has been used in a film.
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