The Long Kiss Goodnight ★★★½
IN 1994 Renny Harlin was well and truly considered bankable in Hollywood following the commercial successes of Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger.
But then the Finnish director blew $90 million making pirate adventure Cutthroat Island and sent one of the studios almost broke.
A year later, the producers of The Long Kiss Goodnight must have been very nervous having Harlin and one of his Cutthroat Island stars, Geena Davis, on board for the action thriller.
They were right to be, even though they had Samuel L. Jackson in the main cast and a script by Shane Black who was riding high after Lethal Weapon.
In the end The Long Kiss Goodnight didn’t set the 1996 box office on fire, but has slowly gathered a strong following via home video release.
In many ways it’s still one of the prototypes for many recent films and television series based on the premise of a seemingly ordinary person whose past as a spy or soldier raises its head.
In this case Davis plays teacher Samantha Caine, who lives with her boyfriend Hal and young daughter Caitlin in the small town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania.
It’s the lead-up to Christmas Day and Samantha takes part in the town’s annual parade which is highlighted in a television news report. The sight of Samantha enrages a one-eyed prison inmate.
We learn that eight years earlier she was a Jane Doe, found washed ashore on a New Jersey beach, pregnant and totally amnesiac.
While creating a completely new life, she has had a succession of private investigators unsuccessfully trying to discover her past, the latest being the dodgy Mitch Henessey, played with all his usual flare by Jackson.
Three things then happen – after being concussed in a car accident, Samantha wakes up to find she possesses knife skills that she cannot explain; the one-eyed prison inmate breaks into their house and tries to kill her; and Hennessey finds a lead on Samantha’s possible previous identity.
The pair go on the road together and eventually discover Samantha’s extraordinary background as a government agent. As Samantha starts getting her old fighting skills back the danger to her family grows as she and Hennessy have to stop a terrorist bombing.
While this is standard fare, the plot is deepened somewhat by Samantha’s internal conflict as she struggles to decide which identity is the right one for her.
Davis and Hennessy work very well together and the strong supporting cast includes the likes of Brian Cox, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko and David Morse.
Like the Die Hard films, it’s full of wisecracking good and bad guys and plenty of over-the-top action sequences that still measure up to today’s standards.
Watched on Apple TV.