Having read some of the criticisms of THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, I am beginning to wonder if we all saw the same movie. There is NOTHING in this film, NOTHING more implausible than anything in even the BEST James Bond film. WHY would Daedalus (David Morse) be alone, when he is the head of a terrorist syndicate? The answer is CLEARLY revealed in the movie. Why doesn't Samuel Jackson bleed to death when he's shot? It's COLD and SNOWING, blood pressure drops and blood coagulates easier. My gosh, you could have a similar criticism about Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in TITANIC! I've watched TLKG FOUR times and I am still LOOKING for the "plotholes" I keep hearing about, and I have marketed scripts in Hollywood. I believe TLKG is the BEST action film ever made; the only thing which comes close is DIE HARD! TLKG, while never dull, builds slowly to a virtual nonstop crescendo of action. The music is both powerful and incredibly touching. The film has memorable performances, most notably, Geena Davis and Craig Bierko. Bierko creates one of the screens most memorable villians. One would have to go back to Russell Crowe in VIRTUOSITY, or Alan Rickman in ROBIN HOOD or DIE HARD! to find another as memorable (JAMES BOND producers take note!) But more than this, the film transcends the genre of action film by it's underlying themes of duality and femininity (not feminism). Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) is a pretty typical 90s woman; a single parent, a school teacher, a homeowner, and engaged to a pleasant, if bland, fellow school teacher. Only one thing keeps Samantha's life from being perfectly "normal." Eight years earlier Samantha woke up on a beach, pregnant, suffering from a head wound and amnesia. For eight years, Samantha has been trying to rediscover her past; she lives to regret that decision. For Samantha is actually Charlie Baltimore, an assassin for the Central Intelligence Agency; and the people who left her on that beach eight years before want her dead. Samantha begins a horrendous journey in which she risks not MORE than her life. Samantha Caine risks losing her identity forever in the person of Charlie Baltimore. And Charlie? What a piece of work! Charlie Baltimore is the most cold-blooded antihero I've ever seen in a movie. After all, what other "hero" ever plotted to kill her own child to cover her tracks? Charlie, short blond hair, angular figure, sexual predator, could have easily have been a man. The "masculine" Charlie holds the "feminine" Samantha in contempt. Yet, it is only by integrating "Samantha" and "Charlie" that enables Samantha/Charlie to prevail. This is more than the equivalent of "Jekyl" needing "Hyde" or "Superman" needing "Clark Kent." This is about the integration of the "masculine" and "feminine" sides in each of us to create a "whole" identity. No where is this integration more apparent than when "Charlie" wrecks the truck containing the chemical bomb. "He/She" says "Well s***k my d**k!" IMMEDIATELY after that line, "Charlie" submerges into "Samantha." But not the wimpy domestic of the early film. A strong, self-reliant, but ultimately humanistic Samantha. One simply has to experience THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT to understand this. This is one excellent film, the only movie I've ever given a "10".
Review of The Long Kiss Goodnight
