THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT
A film review by George McAdams
Copyright 1996 George McAdams
Grade *** out of ****
Thirty years ago, if you were told that women would become beat policemen, serial killers, or spies, chances are you seriously doubted the first two suggestions, but not the third, after all the exploits of Mata Hari had been indoctrinated into the beliefs of the American male. While the last thirty years has seen women become an integral part of police departments everywhere and an occasional woman serial killer has surfaced, the female spy has only taken a supplementary role in the cinema. In The Long Kiss Goodnight ( http://www.longkiss.com/ ), Geena Davis, under the direction of her husband Renny Harlin, has broken, not only the screen image "sweetness" that she has been saddled with since her television days on "Buffalo Bill," and continued with "A League of Their Own" and "Speechless," but she has given us a credible female spy/action figure with her characterization of "Charly Baltimore, a former CIA agent, who everyone thought had been killed, but who was really living the life of her undercover character, Samantha Caine. Of course, she's not the first female to play a spy or an action figure, Cynthia Rothrock tried, and Anne Parilla, in La Femme Nikita, succeeded, but while it's one thing to succeed in France, one's not really successful until the movie's made in Hollywood--and please don't even think about Bridget Fonda's remake of Nikita, Point of No Return, being successful because it lacked Parilla's conviction, however misguided. As Geena Davis morph's into the character of Charly Baltimore, she takes on a toughness that comes from living on the edge with glee. As her past creeps upon her, and her lurid past becomes an exciting present, a spark returns to her life that Samantha Caine, schoolteacher, had unknowingly suppressed. For me the image of Charly, rolling a shot glass of booze over her cheek until it's wrapped around her lips, speaks more of her character than the hundreds of bullets she shoots from the guns that abound every other frame of this action packed adventure. The web pages for The Long Kiss Goodnight are exceptional in their delivery of behind the screens interviews from not only Geena Davis ( http://www.longkiss.com/Geena/gnacontnt.html ), but also Samuel L. Jackson ( http://www.longkiss.com/Sam/samcontnt.html ). Whole scenes of dialogue are also available, with even storyboards of crucial ones such as the scene where Charly is being tortured by being immersed underwater ( http://www.longkiss.com/Wheel.sc/wheelscript.html ) If you long for a credible action movie and can accept that the lead actor is a woman, then The Long Kiss Goodnight is just the movie for you. For web links to other movie sites, check-out the Movies-in-the-Net web page at http://www.primenet.com/~george
-- http://www.primenet.com/~george
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