THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1996) ** (out of four)
Geena Davis: Action Star. Whose bright idea was that?
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT plays like a two-hour comic book, with tongue-in-cheek dialogue, caricatures instead of characters and more violations of the laws of physics than the Big Bang theory... No, I don't want hate mail from scientifically-minded people out there, so if you didn't like that "Big Bang theory" reference, just change it to "creationism" and everyone will be happy.
Davis plays a conservative school teacher in a small town. She's got a daughter and a decent boyfriend, but there's only one problem. She doesn't remember anything from her life before eight years ago. No childhood memories, no teenage memories, nothing prior to 1988. She's hired private detectives to dig up dirt on her past, but has so far discovered nothing. Until one night, when she hits a deer and runs off the road. She starts having weird dreams and finds her mood changing every once in awhile.
That's when Samuel L. Jackson, the lowest-rent P.I. she hired, finds an old postcard with her handwriting on it, announcing her engagement. When Jackson is bringing this information over to Davis' house, someone else is already at her house, trying to kill her. She discovers she somehow knows how to fight, and kicks the guy's butt while her meek boyfriend watches.
Davis and Jackson head off the next day to track down the address on the postcard, eventually finding out Davis used to be an assassin working for a secret government organization. She slowly regains her old personality as more and more people try to kill her and she continues to send them to their graves. The transformation is complete when she cuts most of her hair off and dyes the rest platinum blonde. Then she sings "Heart of Glass."
The conspiracy to murder her, predictably, stems from the same organization that she used to work for. It also involves a bomb somehow and Davis' kid gets trapped in a tractor-trailer. Along the way, Davis and Jackson outrun fire, jump out a window and land in an icy pond, and survive explosions and electrocution. None of it is believable, particularly Davis as Tank Girl.
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT at least has a sense of humor itself, Jackson's character in particular. Without Jackson, who is quintessentially cool no matter what movie he's in, this movie would have been damn near unbearable. This movie is only for those people who like cliched, cartoonish action movies that have no bearing whatsoever on the real world. There are good movies that fall into that category, but as far as this one goes, you can kiss it goodnight.
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