The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Directed by Renny Harlin
Samantha Caine is a small-town schoolteacher and mom with no memory of her life before washing up on a beach eight years ago. After a car accident and a violent home invasion trigger flashes of her past, she discovers she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Teaming up with a wisecracking private investigator, Samantha must return to her old ways to take down the people who tried to erase her.
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8 films that influenced The Long Kiss Goodnight
What critics say influenced The Long Kiss Goodnight
Renny Harlin can't resist a reference to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye in his new f/x-laden action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight.
And Brian Cox, once so wonderful as the Hannibal Lecter of Michael Mann's Manhunter and currently so wasted in The Glimmer Man, boosts the movie as the wily old man who trained Charly to be a bad girl.
In the process, Weaver became one of the first buff female action heroines - a prototype for the few who have appeared on the scene in the 15 years since then (including Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, another Cameron film, and Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight).
Unfortunately, Davis isn't working with Cameron, she's working with Harlin, who mistakenly swipes from Cameron's "True Lies" rather than from his "Terminator" movies or "Aliens."
Never mind that audiences repeatedly shun hellbent super-heroines -- except for "Pussycat" kitsch or those who knock heads off-planet, as in the "Alien" series.
Unfortunately, Davis isn't working with Cameron, she's working with Harlin, who mistakenly swipes from Cameron's "True Lies" rather than from his "Terminator" movies or "Aliens."
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Geena Davis and her director-husband, Renny Harlin, crawled out from under the rubble of Cutthroat Island, which at the time was reported to be the costliest flop in Hollywood history, to make an even nastier action thriller, about a housewife with amnesia who discovers she's actually a trained government assassin (and apparently takes her orders directly from La femme Nikita).
Together with screenwriter Shane Black, ("The Long Kiss Goodnight," "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Donner keeps things moving at a pace that seldom allows one to breathe or a moment to reflect on how silly it all is.
Samantha/Charly is an intriguing creation, and it's too bad her creator, Shane Black (who also wrote Lethal Weapon), couldn't have devised a better story for her.
Written by Shane Black for a $4 million paycheck, the story, like his sole hit, "Lethal Weapon," pits the salt-and-pepper team of Davis and saucy sidekick Samuel L. Jackson against a slew of rogue CIA operatives and a notorious arms dealer.
The goofy plot, scripted by Shane Black ( "The Last Boy Scout," "Lethal Weapon" ), features Davis as Samantha, a sweet single mom who teaches school, throws cheery Christmas parties and dates a nice fellow.
And Shane Black took care of the script having also provided the story for both "Lethal Weapon" and its sequel.
Jackson's character is a lot like Danny Glover's in the "Lethal Weapon" movies.
The goofy plot, scripted by Shane Black ( "The Last Boy Scout," "Lethal Weapon" ), features Davis as Samantha, a sweet single mom who teaches school, throws cheery Christmas parties and dates a nice fellow.
This effort turned out to be a lot more like his screenplay for "The Last Boy Scout".
This is the latest screenplay by Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout.
As he did with his hearty pirate flop Cutthroat Island, director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger) deploys his real-life wife, Davis, as a kind of living rebuke to macho, inviting her to flex, curse, and kill with a lusty gleam in her eye.
Renny Harlin signed up as director with " Cliffhanger " and " Die Hard 2 " under his belt.
Harlin has described this repeatedly as his favorite among his own movies, leaving aside the ones that shoulda been contenders for that honor (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) and those that absolutely shouldn't (Driven, Cutthroat Island, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane).
(Harlin is Geena's husband and director of the similarly snowy action fests "Cliffhanger" and "Die Hard II").