The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Yvonne Zima

Synopsis: A housewife suffering from amnesia begins to suspect she used to be a secret agent.

Boy, The Long Kiss Goodnight is a long movie. It starts off OK but it just doesn’t seem to know when to stop.   Geena Davis (Thelma & Louise) stars as an everyday amnesiac housewife who discovers she is actually a female James Bond.   Samuel L. Jackson (The Legend of Tarzan, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) is the slightly sleazy private detective she has employed to find out who she really is.   After eight years her memory starts returning – she discovers she’s a dab hand at chopping tomatoes and has poltergeist type experiences with her mirror – just as a prison inmate whose eye she popped out in her previous life sees her on TV and hunts her down.   That’s only the start of it though – his explosive entry into her house signals the beginning of a series of plot twists that never really provide enough intrigue to keep you interested, and a succession of action set-pieces that eventually start to feel ever-so-slightly superfluous as the movie proves as hard to kill as Davis’s nemesis – an agency loose cannon with the scary name of Timothy (Craig Bierko – ‘Til There Was You, The Thirteenth Floor).

(Reviewed 6th January 2012)