The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The Long Kiss GoodnightThe best gift you can give an assassin at Christmas is a contract on a cheating spouse.Regrettably, the killer in this action movie has forgotten who she is.When a holiday head injury jogs memories of her being a CIA assassin, mild-mannered schoolteacher Samantha (Geena Davis) hires a private detective (Samuel L. Jackson) to help her uncover this mysterious past she has forgotten.It's not long until the agent who tried to kill her the first time comes to finish the job that Sam recalls her final mission to frame Islamic terrorists for a CIA bombing of Niagara Falls.With its breakneck action sequences, slick dialogue and hilarious performance from Sam Jackson, this highly underrated buddy picture from 1996 is also a neglected Christmas movie that deserves a seat at the yuletide action movie table. Besides, with all of the seasonal suicides Christmas is a slow time for hit-men.Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) is a suburban teacher married to Hal (Tom Amandes) with a daughter. She suffered amnesia 8 years ago and has been hiring private detectives. However after so many years, she's down to the cheap unscrupulous Mitch Henessey (Samuel L. Jackson) and his assistant Trin (Melina Kanakaredes). Parts of her old personality starts to seep through after a car accident. Her name was Charly Baltimore and she was a skilled government assassin. People from her past starts coming back to kill her. Timothy (Craig Bierko) finds out that she's still alive and starts tracking her down as well as many others who would rather have her dead. Mitch uncovers a treasure trove of her past which she uses to call Dr. Nathan Waldman (Brian Cox).I love the idea of this movie. Shane Black has written some interesting hard boiled movies. I'm not as in love with director Renny Harlin's execution. The movie also bogs down with too many bad guys with too complicated of a story. The action is OK and there's lots of it. Davis and Jackson need to have better chemistry. I think Davis is a little too off-putting and angry. This movie has its moments but other movies with similar stories have been done better.

complete nonsense done with great style and excess. better than 'bourne' because it has humour and the story isn't banal. edges 'diehard 3' (forget the rest of that series) because it has two unusual heroes and one of them is a women (yes I know that SJ is in both). good story (although silly at end - Hollywood) with very good script and very good leads. bad guys are bad, the in-betweeners don't last long and the good guys are both good and bad. if only they could make nonsense with such humour and style these days.......... perhaps even once every five years. if only (again) the 'has been' and 'want to be' genre movies could achieve this level of proficiency and entertainment. always a favourite and way beyond the average rating in IMDb. don't believe the nay sayers, particularly the professional media who don't rate it. they clearly do not understand the genre nor are they interested in watching this kind of stuff - they have to! go watch it!

Hollywood's favorite spy plot in the post-Cold War era has ultra-secret agencies trying to justify their mission by fabricating new villains to replace the Soviets. In director Renny Harlin's high-octane actioneer "The Long Kiss Goodbye," Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson, the Central Intelligence Agency fakes a terrorist attack at Niagara Falls so Congress won't slash its budget. What the CIA doesn't count on is the return of one of its top assassins, long-believed lifeless, who doesn't take anything lying down. New Line Cinema has cast the "Thelma & Louise" star as New England school teacher Samantha Caine who suffers from amnesia. Eight years earlier, she washed up on the New Jersey coast two months pregnant without a clue to her own identity. Since then she has paid a number of private eyes to recover her memory. When the CIA learns that she is still alive and breathing, the company dispatches a gang of assassins. Meanwhile, sleazy private eye Mitch Henessey ((Samuel L. Jackson of "Pulp Fiction") is a detective who specializes in blackmail. He has found traces of Samantha's past when she was Charlene Baltimore.Scenarist Shane Black, who wrote "Lethal Weapon" (1987) and "The Last Boy Scout" (1991) and more recently "Iron Man 3," penned a trim but improbable screenplay that neatly knits together all the loose ends and packs one hell of a wallop. The dialogue crackles with blasphemous irreverence. Finnish helmer Renny Harlin ("Cliffhanger" and "Die Hard 2: Die Harder") shows that he still has the knack when it comes to orchestrating knock-out action scenes. Harlin and Black kiss off any sense of credibility as their protagonists survive too many crashes and look too cool riddling the bad guys with bullets. Davis acquits herself well as the super-heroine in a gender reversal of James Bond. This is the kind of free-for-all, tongue-in-cheek action epic that media watchdogs like to condemn for its cartoon violence and inappropriate behavior. When Caine becomes Charlie Baltimore, she spews profanities of the worst sort, laps up liquor like ice water and puffs on tobacco cigarettes like a chimney. If you're tired of cooking and watching men destroy the planet, "The Long Kiss Goodnight" is just the kind of rollicking nonsense to set your sights on when you're looking for something memorable with lots of audacious combat sequences. The scene where our heroine is strapped to a water wheel is terrific. Craig Bierko and David Morse make venomous villains. "The Long Kiss Goodnight" never wears out its welcome and it ranks as one of Geena Davis' best action flicks.