The Long Kiss Goodnight

[1996, Movie]

The Long Kiss Goodnight: Review

Blondes have more guns: Geena Davis and Craig Bierko

A moving comic book filled with guns, explosions and ridiculous conspiracies, punctuated by gratuitous shower sequences and scenes in which the heroine muses, "Sometimes I stand naked in front of the mirror and wonder how old I am," while doing just that. Miss prissy-pants schoolteacher Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) has had amnesia for eight years, until a car accident precipitates bloody dreams of a bleached blonde harpy named Charly. Charly has a creepy habit of hanging around in mirrors and says she's coming back. Next thing you know, Samantha's playing with knives, cussing like a sailor and scaring the bejesus out of her nearest and dearest. Enter the cheap detective (Samuel L. Jackson) she once hired to look into her identity, who's found a clue that leads them to Charly Baltimore, the stone killer Samantha once was. Directed by Renny Harlin and starring his wife, who's a bit old to be kitting herself out in LA FEMME NIKITA drag, this is the kind of movie in which a dozen bad guys with an automatic weapon in each hand couldn't hit a lake if they were standing at the bottom of it, to steal the screenplay's best wiseacre remark.