1996 Directed by Renny Harlin
Samantha Caine, suburban homemaker, is the ideal mom to her 8 year old daughter Caitlin. She lives in Honesdale, PA, has a job teaching school and makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town. But when she receives a bump on her head, she begins to remember small parts of her previous life as a lethal, top-secret agent.
Steve Tisch Shane Black Stephanie Austin Michael De Luca Geena Davis Renny Harlin Richard Saperstein
This is Renny Harlin's Get Out of Movie Jail Free Card for the rest of his life.
My favorite thing in this is the glee with which she takes every bad guy's life.
Even Renny Harlin's penchant for mediocrity can't break a Shane Black penned script.
This film is absolutely ridiculous. Its premise is completely out there and for all intents and purposes it shouldn't work. But it does. Oh, how it does.
See, there is one universal truth. If you hand Samuel L. Jackson superb lines, he makes them even better. So it is safe to say that Jackson and Shane Black are a match made in heaven.
Add to that an excellent Geena Davis and David Morse, some great action sequences and a completely bonkers conclusion and you've got yourself a perfect little slice of action entertainment.
This encapsulates all the abiding obsessions and tropes of a Shane Black film: Christmas, being horny, smoking cigs, PIs, black guy/white guy (in this case, woman) bants, and being a gross, lowlife piece of shit, who still loves and is a good parent to their precocious and inexplicably well-adjusted child.
Plus the plot is about how the CIA did the first World Trade Center bombing, but that wasn't enough so they're going to do another false flag terrorist attack, "blame it on the muslims" and stop congress from spending their money on healthcare. I swear to God, the CIA was universally the villains in every single movie until Marvel/Disney/Deep State took over movies.
Sam Jackson's fits in this movie are…
"I'm always frank and earnest with women. Uh, in New York I'm Frank, and Chicago I'm Ernest."
"Fuck it... run for your life" -Mitch,
- Renny Harlin Ranked: boxd.it/1v4qa
- Fall Rewatch Challenge 2020: boxd.it/82kok "A Mystery"
So good.
Renny Harlin is one of my favorite trash directors. I think he has a flair to his work and an ability to make the mediocre just a little more watchable and fun. I like him. The Long Kiss Goodnight, however, is his no kidding around let's get right down to it action mystery behmoth... it's not trash at all... it's just great. It helps that he got a badass female spy lead played by Geena Davis, a Shane Black script not named "The Predator" and Samuel Jackson in one of his most Samuel Jackson roles. But those sweet…
Just when we thought the action genre was fading after its burly peak in the 80’s, this 90’s firecracker came along and blew the lid off the genre.
Subtlety was never one of Renny Harlin’s strongest attributes, but by relishing in that high-octane ‘over-the-top’ violence to quite literally fuel his narrative, it’s clear that he really drew inspiration from the previous decade with an admirable amount of heart and gusto.
What’s also really incredible about these kinds of iconic blockbusters is that, it’s not until revisiting them decades later that we realise how influential they’ve actually become across all facets of cinema, from the creative use of practical effects right down to the depiction of women portraying strong characters with…
A president who defies the CIA (who are in service to the U.S. capitalist class directly or indirectly) doesn't survive, but whatever, this movie is somehow hilarious? Maybe I'm just feeling good for some reason. Anyway, the misogyny is a bit much and the racial dynamics are sometimes kinda gross--though bless Sam Jackson for calling it out at least once. What an absurd fucking film.
Why didn't we get a dozen Geena Davis action movies after this? She and Samuel L. Jackson have great chemistry - makes me happy that he considers this one of his favorite roles.
Shane Black wrote the ultimate spec script here. He always knows how to craft a climax (this one reaches SUCH absurd and spectacular heights). You forget how much you care about his flawed-but-lovable characters until they're put in life-or-death situations. It's so comforting to watch a Shane Black actioner because in many ways he keeps making the same movie.
Distinctively 90s over-the-top action and plot with comical bad guys (which seem unfathomable in a post 9-11 world). In some ways an earlier iteration of Lucy & Atomic Blonde.
Man fuck Die Hard, this is the action movie centered around saving a child around Christmas of my heart. There's a direct line you could draw from Geena Davis here to Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde (a less coherent movie despite The Long Kiss Goodnight's utterly bonkers premise). Still very nineties in terms of, idk, PC-ness, but slightly more self-aware than most -- much of that rests on Samuel L. Jackson's shoulders, as his character is there to point out the racist (and to a lesser extent sexist) implications of whatever is happening.
Totally bangs.
This movie is still great. Its 90's excess hangs on a believable core: Geena Davis as covert badass. I honestly feel this lady can throw a punch. And she's definitely smart enough to MacGuyver her way out of some bad situations. What a fun ride!
UMM Geena Davis serving sexy cottage core cum atomic blonde cum Free People lewks? Samuel L Jackson’s hats? An absurd plot packed with melodrama and engaging action sequences? Yes. Just yes. This one is a crowd pleaser.
Shane Black, Christmas, CIA deep state, Samuel L. Jackson as Mitch Hennessey, and a whole shitload of southern Ontario landmarks. The perfect winter movie. RIP Honest Eds
There's a bit in this Shane Black movie where The Long Goodbye is prominently playing on the television and I have never felt more targeted in my screenwriting style. So what if I want to write vulgar, quippy comedies with loser private investigator protagonists for the test of my life? Shane Black's gotta die at some point, right?
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