The Long Kiss Goodnight

Geena Davis is chopping vegetables with the terrifying precision of a master chef, but she thinks she’s just a suburban schoolteacher named Samantha Caine. This is the opening gambit of The Long Kiss Goodnight, a movie that feels like a $65 million fever dream where the mid-90s decided to see exactly how much gunpowder a single frame could hold before it spontaneously combusted. It arrived at a weird crossroads in cinema history: right after the husband-wife duo of Geena Davis and director Renny Harlin almost bankrupted a studio with the pirate epic Cutthroat Island, and right as the "Spec Script" era was reaching its absolute zenith.

The Four Million Dollar Mouthpiece

The DNA of this film is pure Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Nice Guys). At the time, New Line Cinema paid a then-record $4 million for his screenplay, and honestly, you can hear every cent of it on screen. The dialogue doesn’t just sit there; it snaps, crackles, and insults your intelligence in the best way possible. While the plot follows the "amnesiac assassin" trope that The Bourne Identity would later turn into a somber meditation on identity, The Long Kiss Goodnight chooses to be a loud, profanity-laced Christmas party instead.

The heart of the movie isn't actually the mystery of Samantha’s past; it’s the mismatched-buddy energy between Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. As Mitch Henessey, a low-rent private eye who wears a Toupee and sings bad songs about his own greatness, Jackson provides the perfect foil to Davis’s lethal transformation. It’s a crime that we never got a sequel featuring these two just bickering in a car for two hours. I watched this most recently while eating an entire bag of lukewarm baby carrots, and I can confirm that Mitch’s one-liners are much easier to swallow than raw vegetables.

Practical Mayhem and the Bridge to Nowhere

We’re living in an era where "action" often means a digital character falling through a digital sky, so revisiting Renny Harlin’s 1996 playground is a shock to the system. There is a weight to the destruction here that feels dangerously real. When a house explodes in the first act, you don’t just see light; you feel the shockwave. Harlin was always a director who preferred the "more is more" approach, and here, he’s at the top of his game.

One of the standout sequences involves Geena Davis diving through a window, shooting at a frozen lake to create an escape hole, and plunging into the sub-zero water. Most of that was actually Davis, who apparently had a high tolerance for misery and a complete lack of a survival instinct during production. The climactic bridge sequence—featuring a tanker truck, a massive explosion, and a very stressed-out Yvonne Zima as the daughter—used one of the largest practical explosions ever filmed at the time. You can see the heat on the actors' faces. It’s the kind of stunt work that makes me miss the days when "safety third" felt like a legitimate production motto.

A Villain with a Sentient Haircut

Every great 90s action flick needs a punchable villain, and Craig Bierko delivers as Timothy. He is essentially a sentient haircut with a sniper rifle, playing the role with a smug, "I went to Julliard but now I kill moms" energy that is endlessly entertaining. Beside him, the legendary Brian Cox shows up as Dr. Nathan Waldman, bringing a gravitas that the movie probably didn't deserve but absolutely benefits from.

Looking back, the film’s plot—which involves a "false flag" operation by the CIA to secure more funding—feels remarkably cynical for 1996. It’s an "old-school" spy story wrapped in a "new-school" action skin. It’s also a reminder that for a brief window, Geena Davis was arguably the most capable female action star in Hollywood. She moves from the "Betty Crocker" Samantha to the "Charly Baltimore" ice-queen with a chilling efficiency. When she dyes her hair blonde and starts smoking like a chimney, the movie shifts gears into a higher, meaner octane.

The film didn't set the box office on fire in 1996, likely because audiences were still nursing their Cutthroat Island hangovers, but it has aged like a fine, high-explosive wine. It captures that specific moment when CGI was beginning to creep in (some of the digital blood and background plates are a bit "Windows 95"), but the core of the filmmaking was still rooted in stuntmen throwing themselves off buildings. If you want a movie that treats physics as a polite suggestion and gives Samuel L. Jackson some of his best non-Tarantino lines, this is the one. It’s a loud, proud, and incredibly smart piece of "dumb" fun that deserves a spot on your shelf next to Die Hard and The Last Boy Scout.