Au revoir à jamais

Not a box office success; no-one really knows why. It may have failed simply because of its title. It looks as though you need a two-word tough-guy title to attract a sufficient proportion of the idiot crowd - "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon", "Hard Weapon", "Die Lethal", etc. - talking about "the long kiss goodnight" will get you nowhere. But for once Renny Harlin has made a GOOD action movie. A large part of the reason for this lies in the fact that the central character, Samantha, earns our affection and interest early on. As she becomes Charly again, we're torn: we certainly want Charly to thwart the bad guys, and all that; but we don't want her to lose touch with Samantha in order to do so - even though we like Charly, too. Geena Davis bestows all of her considerable charm on both halves of the central character. Samuel L. Jackson plays second fiddle for a change. It turns out he's good at it. That was a compliment.

Intelligent, far superior to anything in the "Die Hard" series - if I were more cynical I'd add, "it's not surprising that it didn't do well", but I don't really feel that way; it IS surprising that it didn't do well.

I was about to go to sleep while I flicked through the channels one last time and happened to catch the beginning of "The Long Kiss Goodnight"- perhaps I missed the first minute or two. But I remembered I had marked the movie to watch and thought what the heck- I'll watch. I can honestly say that I really enjoyed those two hours. The scene with the truck was definitely fun, and at the same time terrifying (as you know the purpose of the truck and who's in it, I won't spoil it for anyone). The humor was great too, and the acting of the four leads (Davis, Jackson, Zima and Bierko) was quite enjoyable- as is this entire film.

Before Jason Bourne was an assassin who lost his memory there was Charlie Baltimore and she has no sequels. The way I see it, Geena Davis was ahead of her time. Yes, we'd had "La Femme Nikita" and maybe a few others, but "The Long Kiss Goodnight" was the first female kickass assassin movie I'd ever seen.

This movie went for a tandem that hadn't quite been explored: White female with Black male. I think it worked fabulously. Samuel Jackson pretty much reprised his same role in "Die Hard with a Vengeance." In there he was the reluctant and very funny sidekick. In TLKG he was pretty much the same: a low-rent private eye who was thrust into the middle of a federal game of kill or be killed.

Geena Davis, as Charlene "Charlie" Baltimore was perfect if not for her known character types. She'd always played a fragile motherly type: "The Fly," "Beetlejuice," and "Thelma & Louise" are a few examples. So she fit nicely as a spy who'd lost her memory and wound up being a small town matriarch known for her cookies and clean life. Then to see her flip and become this foul mouth, unbreakable, vicious assassin was awesome.

My only question is where is "The Long Kiss Goodnight 2"? Worse spy/assassin movies have been given sequels so why not give Charlie Baltimore a franchise?

A lot of 'The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)' is decidedly silly, especially when it comes to its over-the-top, tonally jarring and generally just outright ridiculous action sequences. The heroes are essentially indestructible, despite the heavy beating they both endure by the film's end, to the point that it becomes quite ludicrous they'd survive the events they do (indeed, the original script was much darker and even included a major death, which was shot but recut because of audience testing). However, there's generally a knowing vibe the the flick, one that's marked by Shane Black's signature witty banter and some almost ostentatious performances, and this allows the picture to remain fun regardless of its occasional tonal issues, its cartoonish action scenes and all its unkept mayhem (seriously, the flick has quite the body-count). It has an almost satirical feel that's compounded by the several scenery-chewing monologues, tried-and-tested genre cues and people who refer to themselves as spies with a straight face. 6/10

This movie was one of the bridges to the contemporary action movie that has no plot at all and is unabashed about that fact. It is the melding between the 90s attempt at plot and the ever-increasing tendency for all violence all the time with some hot babe shots thrown in. Viewed from the perspective of today's movies with their plasticine-looking heroes and heroines, Davis and Jackson come off as nostalgically genuine and charming.

There are some real laugh out loud moments in this movie, though, and there's a sense of joy in the script and the performances, as if they were having a good time. Action movies/TV today seem like somber enterprises where everyone takes themselves much, much too seriously. (Jennifer Garner projects, for example.)

The movie is a lot of fun and pretends to be nothing else. It was even advertised at the time as a fun movie (tho I've just now watched it, I've seen the previews recently.) I don't understand the poor reviews that seem to compare it to great, serious filmmaking when it was not even marginally aimed at that genre.