The Long Kiss Goodnight
Director: | Renny Harlin |
Writer: | Shane Black |
Director of Photography: | Guillermo Navarro |
Editor: | William C. Goldenberg |
Music: | Alan Silvestri |
Production Designer: | Howard Cummings |
Producers: | Renny Harlin, Shane Black and Stephanie Austin |
New Line; R; 103 minutes | |
Release: | 10/96 |
Cast: | Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko, Brian Cox and David Morse |
Both Harlin and Davis had much to prove in their first outing since the disastrous Cutthroat Island. They both seem to have recovered just fine, and Davis proves that she belongs in the action-hero pantheon alongside Schwarzenegger and Willis. For the past eight years, amnesiac Samantha Caine (Davis) has been the picture-perfect PTA mom and teacher, doting on her 7-year-old daughter. But she begins to question her past when she hits a deer, bumps her head in the accident and then snaps the injured deer's neck to spare him agony. Then, she knows exactly how to handle the assassin who arrives at her door. She hires second-rate private dick Mitch Henessey (Jackson) to dig up her past life, which includes a career as cold-blooded government executioner Charly Baltimore. She spends the remainder of the film flaunting her tough-woman stuff while going after the goons (Malahide and Bierko) who are out to get her. Henessey tries to convince Baltimore she is better suited to being a mother. Yeah, right.