Shane Black sure does have a thing about Christmas, using the festive season as a memorable backdrop in many of his stories, adding a quirky, magical counterpoint to his violent, gritty plots. Plus, blood looks even redder and cooler on frosty snow, as amnesiac suburban mom Samantha (Geena Davis) soon discovers when memories of her forgotten past as a contract killer come creeping back to her in director Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight. It’s a neat idea and Davis is electric in the role. It’s a delight to watch this cookie-baking, PTA-attending housewife gradually morph into a ruthless killer, with the Christmas setting only heightening the shock of the transformation.
It all kicks off due to a (rein?)deer-caused car wreck following a boozy festive party. Concussed, Samantha’s first instinct is to casually snap the injured deer’s neck to put it out of its misery. Yowch. As memories of her murderous past flood back, she enlists Samuel L. Jackson’s seedy P.I. Mitch Henessey to try and discover who she really is. Davis is enjoyable, but Jackson is the film’s M.V.P., in his smooth mid-’90s, post-Pulp Fiction wisecracking, smirking pomp, with Black putting some choice dialogue in his mouth, like “With women I like to be earnest and frank - in New York, I’m Earnest, in Chicago, I’m Frank”. Arf!
Davis gives an excellent dual performance, treating us to a Christmas feast of satisfying, wintry stunt set-pieces, includeinga daring escape from a third story window into a frozen lake, Sam machine-gunning the ice on the way down. Elsewhere, she’ll pop on ice skates to catch up with a car chase that ends in the middle of a yuletide parade and later take advantage of the main villain being tangled up in twinkling Christmas lights as she guns him down.
The whole thing culminates in a huge battle at Niagara Falls on Christmas Eve with loads of decorations being incinerated, alter ego ‘Charly’ realising just how much her child means to her and our heroes discovering a highly inventive use for a ‘Betsy Westy’ children’s doll. This is a good one.
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