6/10
Director Renny Harlin’s ill-fated pirate sojourn with then-wife Geena Davis, “Cutthroat Island,” became an immediate box-office bomb upon its release in 1995 – making it a good thing their next collaboration, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (120 mins., 1996, R; Arrow), was already in production. A movie that brought its screenwriter, Shane “Lethal Weapon” Black, an enormous sum before a frame was shot (a then-record $4 million), “The Long Kiss Goodnight” one-upped Harlin’s seafaring adventure yet still underwhelmed with a disappointing $32 million domestic gross for New Line.
Black’s script offers Davis as a Pennsylvania housewife whose memory dates back a mere eight years. Unable to remember any of her existence before then, Davis’ Samantha Caine looks to be the perfect schoolteacher mom, yet when assassins converge on her domestic bliss, Samantha begins to piece together her previous identity: a sleek, sexy CIA operative named “Charly Baltimore,” a Bourne-like agent with an impeccable special set of skills. To the rescue comes a down-trodden private eye (Samuel L. Jackson) who accompanies Samantha/Charly in an effort to stop the bad guys and piece together both of her identities, all the while saving her young daughter.
“The Long Kiss Goodnight” likely read better than it plays here, the dialogue boasting some funny lines and the script enabling Davis and Jackson to generate decent chemistry together. What’s surprising is that the direction and action set-pieces are barely more than pedestrian, despite Harlin’s genre expertise and a budget that ran upwards of $65 million. It’s hard to see where the money went, because the staging of its physical action scenes is no more than serviceable at best and the overall look of the film only a notch or above your typical Van Damme film from the era. DP Guillermo Navarro later won an Oscar for his work on Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” but there’s little to comment on this movie’s ordinary, unremarkable appearance, some of the stunts augmented with mediocre digital FX and one shoot-out in the picture being interchangeable from the next. It’s a vanilla looking thriller without a whole lot of style.
In terms of performances, Jackson in particular has a good time here in one of his most appealing roles, yet dramatically, the movie only works in fits and starts, and Davis’ narration at the outset seems to have been added in an effort to get the action to kick into gear faster – at a cost to the viewer gaining a fuller appreciation of her character’s domestic side. While Davis still fares much better here than she did as a female Jack Sparrow, this picture, while watchable, never really gels into what it could have been – something confirmed by a nondescript supporting cast (save an under-utilized Brian Cox) that fails to generate much interest.
Nevertheless a cult fave amongst some viewers, “The Long Kiss Goodnight” has been remastered for its 4K UHD by Arrow in another of the label’s superb Dolby Vision HDR (2.39) transfers. Immediate enhancements over Warner’s old Blu-Ray are evident from the start, including warmer, more saturated colors and a nice, if somewhat inconsistent, layer of grain (some shots look softer than others). The original 5.1 and 2.0 DTS MA mixes house a formulaic Alan Silvestri score with a new Dolby Atmos mix included for overhead audio users.
On the supplemental end, Arrow has included new interviews with stunt coordinator Steve Davidson, make-up artist Gordon Smith and actress Yvonne Zima. There are also “visual essays” by Josh Nelson, Howard S. Berger and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, along with archive extras from previous releases (deleted scenes, promo interviews, Making Of). Two new commentaries have also been recorded with critics Walter Chaw, and another track with Drusilla Adeline and Joshua Conkel.