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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The Long Kiss Goodnight is
what happens when you put a script from a truly great writer into the hands of
a notoriously inconsistent director. The screenplay is by Shane Black, the man
who wrote four of the best buddy movies of the last 40 years: Lethal
Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Nice
Guys. With a track record like that, how can you go wrong? Well, you could
give it to the guy who made Die Hard 2, Nightmare on Elm Street 4,
Cliffhanger, and Deep Blue Sea. That doesn't sound too
bad, right? Just a friendly reminder: He also made Driven, Exorcist:
The Beginning, The Covenant, and Cutthroat Island, one of
the most notorious box office bombs of the 1990s. Lucky for us, this
movie belongs more in the former category than the latter.
Harlin is certainly a strange animal. He's capable of
staging action set pieces with stunning shots that stick in your mind, but
those shots are usually tainted with plot holes big enough rival the Grand
Canyon. Remember the scene in the cockpit in Die Hard 2 when
John McClane rushes to eject as his adversaries shower the aircraft with
grenades? He catapults out of the exploding plane into a bird's eye shot until
his nose practically touches the camera. It's a truly great shot... but it
plays out at the expense of your brain cells as the grenades take no less than
37 seconds to ignite. Worst. Grenades. Ever.
The Long Kiss Goodnight has
another scene with a grenade that culminates in a beautiful stunt and explosion
featuring the two main leads jumping out a window as the flames (sigh) from a
single lazy grenade follow them down a long hallway. The sight of them leaping
from the window with the flames licking the hairs on their scalps, shot from
three spectacular angles, is beautifully executed. If only it wasn't completely
impossible. Even a flawless 4K transfer from Arrow Video can't erase this fact,
especially during moments when the new Dolby Atmos mix doesn't quite know how
to balance between the front and rear channels. This is a distraction from time
to time: A music cue with awkwardly timed echo in the rear channels is enough
to take you out of the movie.
Other Harlin-isms that pop up are visual effects that can't match his vision,
awkward ADR, and the kind of performances that can only arise from a director
who clearly prioritizes spectacle over character development. Consider the
scenes with the "character" of Hal (Tom Amandes), the hapless fiancé
of Geena Davis' "Samantha Caine" persona, who has little to no
reaction to the woman he loves demonstrating deadly tactical skills in the face
of a one-eyed psychopath entering their home with a shotgun. Not to mention
knife-handling skills that would rival John Wick. This character is so
inconsequential that you can almost hear the scissors relegating his second and
third dimensions to the cutting room floor. Perhaps the deleted scenes among
the treasure trove of extras in this two-disc set can flesh him out a little.
It's important to acknowledge these issues because, if
you're capable of accepting the inevitable problems that come with even the
best Renny Harlin movies, you'll have a good time watching The Long
Kiss Goodnight. If you've seen the Bourne movies, imagine
those with half a brain, and replace Matt Damon with an amnesiac sexpot
sporting a bad dye job and trash panda makeup. Geena Davis is clearly game for
the part of Samantha Caine/Charlie Baltimore, even if her physicality is all
wrong. Her performance is also pretty uneven, even if a convincing argument can
be made that her post-amnesia persona isn't the real her, so I'll leave it up
to you to decide. Most of the film's success is due to Shane Black's ability to
bring organic humor out of any situation. For that dialogue to land you need
actors working at the top of their game, and Harlin was smart enough to cast
Samuel L. Jackson as the Murtaugh to Davis' Riggs: He steals the movie every
time he appears, except for a few scenes featuring the scene kleptomaniac Brian
Cox, who shows up out of nowhere with a monologue about the nature of dogs
licking their anuses. This moment is so howlingly funny that it singlehandedly
earns the price of the discs.
There are the usual double crosses, gunfights, car chases,
child in peril moments, and suggestive nudity. You can practically hear Renny
Harlin during Geena Davis' shower scene saying, "You like my wife? Me
too." The movie also ends with one of the most spectacular explosions of
its era. Seriously, it's that good. Davis and Jackson have really good
chemistry together, especially in the later scenes when Charlie Baltimore
reemerges and begins the process of licking the scenery before devouring it
wholesale. By the time Davis uses a potty-time baby doll to keep an emergency
stash of kerosene, and Jackson is exploded out the second floor window of a
sleazy motel and flies through a neon sign like a screaming cannonball, somehow
landing safely in a tree two football fields away, you know exactly what
kind of movie you're watching. It's ludicrous, absurd, hilarious, cliched, and
lots of fun. The shame factor comes in when you sit back during the credits and
realize just how much more it could've been.
--Blake O. Kleiner
