Review: The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Rated R for a substantial amount of strong bloody violence, and for strong language

Score: 3 out of 5

At the time it came out, The Long Kiss Goodnight was a box-office dud that derailed the careers of both its leading lady Geena Davis and its writer Shane Black, but since then, with Black having made a comeback, it's come to be remembered as a hidden gem in his filmography. It has several obvious faults to it that make me understand why it flopped, from Davis being miscast as the protagonist to action scenes that, at their worst, were pretty muddled and forgettable, but this is a film that largely succeeds on the strength of the thing that makes every Shane Black movie entertaining on some level: the writing and buddy chemistry between the leads. It's a fun and entertaining '90s action flick that has some problems and whose villain's evil plan is really, really uncomfortable in hindsight, but is blessed with a great premise and a decent execution of such.

Our heroine, Samantha Caine, washed up on the Jersey Shore eight years ago with a baby in her womb and no memory of who she was. Since then, she started dating a man named Hal, with whom she now raises her daughter Caitlin, and got a job as a schoolteacher in suburban Pennsylvania, all while hiring a private investigator named Mitch Henessey to help her figure out who she used to be. After a car accident that leaves her with a bad bump on her head, she starts to remember -- and unfortunately for her, her past self, a notorious CIA assassin named Charly Baltimore, is the exact opposite of who she is now. Even worse, a convict who once tangled with her recognizes her in an appearance on the news and breaks out of prison to kill her, and while she takes him out with ease, the CIA soon realizes that its former asset is still alive and back in the field. Fearing for her family's safety, Samantha finds herself on the run with Mitch as the CIA sets out to close off a loose end from the Cold War, one who may blow wide open a false-flag terrorist plot on US soil, all while Samantha's old Charly identity begins to reassert herself.

Let's get the giant elephant in the room out of the way right now. This is a movie about Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson stopping 9/11, and I don't mean the widely accepted version of what happened that day. I mean the Loose Change version, the film's CIA villains plotting to blow up thousands of people in New York state (albeit in Niagara Falls instead of Lower Manhattan) and blame it on Muslims in order to get a boost to their funding. The fact that this film was made in 1996 only made my jaw drop that much harder when the villain started laying out his plot, which felt lifted word-for-word from any number of barely-coherent 9/11 "truther" screeds posted online in the last fifteen years -- complete with a direct reference to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a failed false-flag attack. This is a film that, if made today, would look almost completely different in terms of the nature of its villains. Honestly, that unintentional shock value worked in this film's favor, given that the plot as it stands is otherwise convoluted to a fault, and hardly the most interesting thing about it. By the climax, I didn't care who was on whose side except for the fact that Samantha and Mitch were the good guys, and really, that was the important part. Shane Black has always been at his best when crafting amusing relationships between his characters as they go through bombastic action movie scenarios, his movies filled with quotable lines and interesting characters. Davis and Jackson prove more than capable of selling Black's dialogue and having fun with it, demonstrating why so many action movies have followed the formula he laid down in Lethal Weapon when it comes to character development. Jackson especially shines as a lowlife private eye who's introduced busting a cheating husband in a sting operation, a man who starts out as the guy we trust to protect Samantha but who soon finds himself horribly out of his depth fighting government agents, ironically playing the role that's often stereotypically assigned to women in these sorts of action movies (i.e. getting captured and rescued by the hero, before getting a chance to shine at the very end).

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Geena Davis. She is undoubtedly a gifted actress when it comes to comedy and dialogue, handling both her scenes as the loving wife Samantha and her interplay with Jackson quite well, and I get what they were going for on a meta level, casting an actress known for comedies and buddy movies like Beetlejuice, A League of Their Own, and Thelma & Louise to play an action hero. There's just one problem, though: Davis is not an action hero. She may be six feet tall and athletic, but so is Taylor Swift, and watching her try to play the ice queen Charly reminded me of the "new Taylor" from a few years ago. This role needed an actress that could convincingly play both the "good girl" Samantha and the "bad girl" Charly, someone like Carrie-Anne Moss or Nicole Kidman back then or Charlize Theron today, and Davis only pulls off half of the equation. She was good as Samantha, but while she looked good as Charly, it mostly felt like a pose, like a soccer mom putting on a leather jacket and heading to karaoke night at the bar rather than one who's just learned that her entire "soccer mom" persona is a lie. The idea behind her transformation was certainly amusing, and the scenes where she kicks ass were fun to watch, but I wasn't convinced that I was watching the "Jacinda Bourne" that the film was selling her as.

Some of this, admittedly, also stems from the direction by Davis' then-husband Renny Harlin. The man was always in the shadow of other action directors of that time, like John McTiernan and Tony Scott, his best movies being those where he's either imitating the style of other filmmakers or going for full-on camp. And for better or for worse, his direction here is workmanlike and gets the job done. There are some good action scenes and effects shots here, particularly a climatic escape from an explosion that still looks damn impressive (they even reused the scene thirteen years later in The Final Destination, and it was honestly the best special effects by far in an otherwise godforsaken movie), and he does a good job of making Davis look like she can kick ass and take names. On the other hand, he doesn't really excel behind the camera, either, with most of the action just getting the job done rather than delivering anything truly standout. The only memorable scenes were the bridge explosion at the end and one part where Samantha/Charly manages to MacGyver her way out of being locked in a walk-in freezer, and again, that last one largely came down to this film's main strength: Shane Black's writing.

The Bottom Line

I may sound like I'm being fairly harsh, but this is a case where the parts of the film that work, really work. This is the perfect film to remake: one that's deeply flawed, but the underlying core of it is solid enough that it's still enjoyable in spite of its problems.