The Long Kiss Goodnight (Movie Review)

Movie Review
The Long Kiss Goodnight
1996
Starring: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by: Renny Harlin

There was a movie called The Long Kiss Goodnight. It was directed by Renny Harlin. If you haven’t watched it, you’re not missing much. If you have watched it, you’re not hating yourself for investing the time in doing so. Even though some of the action in the movie is quite intense, the movie is fairly bland and is mixed with a very weak story. If you get a kick out of some exciting action scenes or hearing Samuel L. Jackson go on a verbal tirade, then you might enjoy this film. Otherwise, there are other things you can do with your time.

The story starts off in your average town with people minding their own business. One of these people is Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) who appears to be your typical small-town mom. However, things are not as typical as they seem because Samantha has a deep, dark secret. However, it’s so secret that she doesn’t even know about it and it’s about to put her life and her family in serious jeopardy.

It all has to do with what she did for a living prior to becoming a typical suburbanite. She was a secret agent for the CIA and was one of the best in her field. There were problems with her last assignment and those she was working for thought she died. However, she didn’t die; she only had amnesia and completely forgot who she was. However, an incident with an attacker caused her to question where she came from after she expelled the assailant with an arsenal of combat skills she didn’t know she even had. She contacts a seedy private investigator named Mitch Hennessy (Samuel L. Jackson) to help her out. It soon becomes abundantly clear that Samantha was hooked up with some dangerous people in her previous life. The problem is that as she gets closer to solving the truth about her past, those who wanted her dead before find out she’s alive and will stop at nothing to make sure that she stays dead.

One of the biggest problems for the film is the lack of chemistry between Davis and Jackson. They don’t seem to co-exist well together. Maybe it’s Davis’s character’s split personality that sort of derails things but they never seem to be on the same page. This goes beyond a mismatch of characters as it feels like they couldn’t have gotten two more random personalities and stuck them in a car. It seems more the fault of the script (and maybe the director) than anything else as it doesn’t seem like there’s animosity between Davis or Jackson but the pairing feels unnatural despite the fact that the whole point is that they are an unlikely team.

Harlin has always been good at making movies that have interesting twists and very good action scenes. The Long Kiss Goodnight is no different. However, the only problem is that with the story feeling so uninspiring, the plot twists and the action feel somewhat generic. That’s not to say that the movie feels boring; it’s just that it feels like this movie does nothing to distinguish itself from the rest of the films in its genre.

There may be a lot of negativity thrown around in this review but the bad things about this movie don’t really hurt it; they just make the whole thing pointless. There really isn’t anything in the film that feels broken. However, there’s only one really atrocious thing about the movie. The dream (nightmare?) sequences where Samantha is being haunted by who she was in her past feel very amateurish. Granted the film was made in 1996 but even for that time period, the special effects in those scenes look incredibly cheap and cheesy. It’s like they blew the budget on the Niagara Falls scene and were forced to skimp in regards to other special effects.

It’s very hard to find good things to say about The Long Kiss Goodnight. However, I didn’t hate the film and if I was forced to watch the movie again, I wouldn’t look for ways to escape. Renny Harlin did a fine job in trying to work with the material he had. However, the story didn’t lend itself to make a good movie. Don’t go out of your way to see this film but if it’s late night and you can’t sleep and it’s the only thing on TV, then you really have nothing to lose.

☆☆