The Long Kiss Goodnight is constantly at war with itself, and I blame the director. Renny Harlin is better known for getting things done than doing things well. This is a skill in Hollywood, where sometimes just getting a finished product is a win. But here his workmanlike quality did no favors to what might have been a serviceable Shane Black screenplay.
Don’t get me wrong. The Long Kiss Goodnight is consistently entertaining. But it is mostly incoherent, and definitely tonally inconsistent.
Buy The Long Kiss Goodnight 4K UHDWe start with Samantha Caine (Geena Davis), a schoolteacher who woke up eight years earlier with complete amnesia, and a bun in the oven. She finds no clues to her past but builds a future for herself in Pennsylvania. Two wild coincidences threaten that future. First, a car accident re-jogs her noggin. Even if everything doesn’t come back at once, she begins to act strangely. Nearly simultaneously, her face showing up on local television somehow gets to her old enemies. Now there’s a race to contain or destroy her old identity: Charlene Baltimore.
This is a very decent premise, and it hints at psychological depth and deep character introspection. Is Sam the actions she conducts every day, or the secret skills she carries underneath? There’s an interesting story in that contradiction. The Long Kiss Goodnight doesn’t care that much about it.
It’s interested in wild action sequences which come straight out of the mid ’80s. When someone from her past comes a-shooting, he doesn’t do so with stealth and finesse. He brings a shotgun which is apparently also a cannon because it blows out entire walls. This is convenient, because when he does so, Sam grabs her daughter and throws her through this new hole right into the safety of her treehouse. However stupid that sounds, it looks dumber in the movie.
And that’s what does the movie in: constant wild tonal inconsistency. Parts are Commando, parts are Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. And the ultimate conspiracy of the bad guys is so nebulous and so weirdly petty that it is hard to become invested in it as an audience.
The movie way overpunches in the casting department. Samuel L. Jackson is a crooked ex-cop who provides clues to Samantha’s past. Brian Cox plays a professor who also, for some reason, trained her in spycraft. David Morse shows up as a totally underutilized ex-contact, perhaps ex-lover. An intricate and intelligent thriller could have been made from these players and these parts.
Instead, we get a dumb plot with elements cribbed from pulpy spy novels and filled with characters who should be more interesting than the movie lets them be. We’ve got a woman with an identity crisis immediately extracted from her world, where it would make a difference. And ridiculous action sequences that are always fun and always dumb as a box of rocks.
Renny Harlin, the director, competently makes images appear on the screen. His scenes are… okay. But this might as well be half a dozen movies playing at once. Sam Jackson and Brian Cox are given backstories (one explicit, one implicit) that have little backing on their action in the films. This is no attack on the actors. The great cast plays their baffling characters excellently.
Geena Davis has to stretch the most, being simultaneously a confused teacher and a world-class assassin. The latter is a little outside of the actress’s range, but everyone around her is obliging in pretending to find her tough and intimidating.
The Long Kiss Goodnight is definitely entertaining. It’s got blood, bullets, and… well, not really any boobs, though Davis must have had an industrial class bra to maintain her dignity during the water torture sequence. And I do appreciate any movie pulpy enough to have a water-torture sequence.
This 4K release looks fantastic. According to Arrow films, it was taken from the original 35mm film source. To my eyes, it looked immaculate, without excessive grain, but with consummate detailing and accurate color reproduction. Even the ridiculous actions sequences looked great.
The Long Kiss Goodnight needed a more sympathetic director. The story is kind of a parody of spy thrillers, too ridiculous to be taken seriously, but with all the big noisy parts of an action movie. It needed someone who has tight control over his story’s tone, and the wit to match the smart/dumb screenplay. It doesn’t have that, but it entertains, even if the characters never meet their potential. Renny Harlin has no touch for tone or story, but the man can pace a story (even if it feels like wide swaths of narrative have been thrown away.) The Long Kiss Goodnight moves, and entertains. It could have been a lot more, but what it does, it does with gusto.
The Long Kiss Goodnight has been released on 4K UHD by Arrow Video. There are two discs: a 4K disc with the film, and a Blu-ray with bonus features. The Blu-ray does not the feature film. The 4K includes two commentary tracks: one by Walter Chaw, and another by Joshua Conkil and Drusilla Adeline. There’s also a trailer and an image gallery.
New extras on the Blu-ray include “Girl Interrupted” (16 min), an new interview with actress Yvonne Zima; “Symphony of Destruction” (9 min), an interview with stunt coordinator Steve Davidson; “Long Live the New Flesh” (12 min), an interview with make-up artist Gordon J. Smith; “Amnesia Chick” (20 min), a visual essay by Josh Nelson; “The Mirror Crack’d” (HD; 38:36) a visual essay by Kevin Marr, Howard S. Berger and Angela McEntree; “A Woman’s World” (15 min), a visual essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; and Deleted Scenes (HD; 2:32).
There are also several archival extras: Interviews from the EPK: Renny Harlin (2 min), Geena Davis (2 min) Samuel L. Jackson (2 min), Craig Bierko (1 min), and a “Making Of” (HD; 6 min) and “Behind the Scenes” (8 min).
