The Long Kiss Goodnight

with Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Yvonne Zima
Written by Shane Black
Directed by Renny Harlin (New Line, 1996)
by Scott Hefflon

I rented this sucker twice, just to ensure I could quote a few funny one-liners and get ’em right. And ya know something? This movie has, like, various subtle layers to it. When’s the last time you heard that about a pulp-titled action/adventure movie whose box reads, “Action, action, and more action!”? Low-key humor is mixed in with a barrage of “yeah, right” scenes that make you blink stupidly at the screen – and the jokes are actually worth going back for. While there are the typical “Come on you bastard!” yells, hell, who’s to say we’d say anything very profound while the ground around us was being sprayed with machine gun fire? Surprisingly, Geena Davis plays a cocky tough chick as well as she plays a “Phooey, I burned the darn muffins” mom-on-the-PTA. If I remembered her more for Thelma and Louise than Beetlejuice and Earth Girls are Easy, perhaps I wouldn’t be so pleasantly surprised. And damn, is she in fiiiine shape. Yum. And Samuel L. Jackson has just as cool (yet less superhero-strong) a role as in Pulp Fiction. He has the impeccable timing and body movement necessary to milk a rather standard turn of phrase for all it’s worth. This man speaks in quotables, turning every sentence into a joke you and your friends can bring up endlessly. Another notable performance is St. Elsewhere‘s David Morse, the sensitive type, as he switches from a “Well, shucks” country boy to a sadistic CIA operative without so much as a flicker of his smiling, twinkling eyes. While he dies without much screen time, the same can’t be said of newcomer (to me, at least) Craig Bierko. While I had to watch many a scene before I discovered he played the innocuous-sounding Timothy, Bierko plays a charmingly ruthless bad motherfucker, filled with humor, ingenious ways to make people suffer, and he has a smooth voice. He also looks like an older, more confident Bud Bundy with nine o’clock shadow. Think George Michael in black leather with a loaded gun. While I haven’t quoted any of the aforementioned one-liners, I think they exist best when worked almost effortlessly into the storyline. Jackson’s knack for developing idiosyncrasies into a full, realistic character is in top form here. The way he buckles his pants, the way he smokes a cigarette, the way he sings which pocket he put his keys into so he won’t forget – sure, the writing of this movie is unexpectedly good for a trashy action flick, but it takes an actor like Jackson to pull it off with such style.

Footnote: While most of MCA’s soundtrack doesn’t deserve more mention than the fact that it mixes Otis Reading, Muddy Waters, and Marvin Gaye with Neneh Cherry, The Tom Tom Club and Semisonic, playing “Free” by Tracy Bonham during the credits was the best thing I’ve heard since Cat Stevens played “If You Want To Sing Out” at the end of Harold and Maude. God, she’s cool.