|
|
 |
Long Kiss Goodnight (The) (Blu-ray 4K)
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (24th June 2025). |
|
The Film
 The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, 1996) Looking back, The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) represents a fascinating convergence of New Hollywood talent. Shane Black’s script was written after the writer (and sometime actor; later director) had received praise from both critics and audiences for his handling of action motifs and noir-tinged referential dialogue with the successes of Lethal Weapon (1987) and Predator (1987). Positive reception to those films led to Black being awarded a record $1.75 million for his spec script for Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout (1991). Frustratingly for both Scott and Black, the finished picture bore little resemblance to Black’s script; both writer and director denounced the film after its release, claiming that producer Joel Silver had interfered with the material. Black then drastically rewrote Zak Penn and Adam Leff’s script for John McTiernan’s The Last Action Hero (1993), a project for which Black earned a cool $1 million. Black then became Hollywood’s highest paid writer yet again with his next project: for his script for The Long Kiss Goodnight, Black was paid an exceptional sum, $4 million – another record-breaking payday for a spec script. (Between Last Boy Scout and Long Kiss Goodnight, Tom Schulman and Joe Ezsterhas had scored $3 million each for, respectively, their scripts for Medicine Man and Basic Instinct.) In the mid-90s, director Renny Harlin was also in an interesting position within his career, having progressed from making television commercials in the 1980s to directing some huge big-budget features. Harlin had directed a number of big budget Hollywood action-ers, including Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993), but in 1995 his pirate epic Cutthroat Island bombed. That picture, which had experienced a troubled production period owing to various factors (including significant cast changes), became the subject of notoriety and, it’s fair to say, open ridicule. Nevertheless, with Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight Harlin placed his then-wife, Geena Davis, front and centre as an action movie leading lady. There was a clear intention to make Davis, at this point in her career, an action star. (Harlin and Davis were married from 1993-1998, at which point they divorced following Harlin’s affair with Davis’ personal assistant.) Davis herself was at the peak of her stardom during the early/mid-90s, following major roles in Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), and Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own (1992). The latter was a huge hit that is rarely discussed these days, but following its success Davis appeared in a handful of films that performed disappointingly: Martha Coolidge’s romantic comedy Angie (1994) tanked at the box office, and Ron Underwood’s Speechless (1994, which Harlin co-produced) was regarded by critics as a pale imitation of post-war romantic comedies. With Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight, there was a clear attempt to turn Davis into a female action movie lead. At the time, given the relationship between Harlin and Davis, this felt a little forced and nepotistic, and both films struggled with audiences and critics. However, in retrospect there is much to enjoy in both Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight. (The success of Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean – a film with a snot dissimilar “throwback” swashbuckler vibe to Cutthroat – a few years later suggests that, as the saying goes, timing is everything.) The commercial failure of both films marked the end of Davis’ days as a “bankable” Hollywood star, and following the demise of her marriage to Harlin she took some time away from acting. Davis eventually returned to the screen a few years later, in family-friendly comedy roles such as Eleanor Little in Stuart Little (1999), and in parts on television (including The Geena Davis Show, 2000). Cast alongside Davis was Samuel L Jackson, whose career was on the uptake, after many years playing small roles in various pictures, in the wake of the critical and commercial success of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in 1994. Following this, Jackson appeared in some derided but genuinely interesting films, including Barbet Schroeder’s unfairly mocked neo-noir remake of Kiss of Death (1995), Stephen Gyllenhaal’s melodrama Losing Isaiah (1995), and Reginald Hudlin’s sports drama The Great White Hype (1996). Jackson took roles in some big hitters during this period, particularly John McTiernan’s Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Joel Schumacher’s A Time to Kill (1996). In most of these pictures, Jackson took supporting roles, often providing a strong anchoring presence for the plot whilst supporting big name actors who, it perhaps isn’t too controversial to say, were often delivering less impressive performances. It was in the midst of this period that Jackson appeared in The Long Kiss Goodnight. In Harlin’s film, Jackson once again takes a supporting role; and as in many of Jackson’s other projects from this period, Jackson’s presence undoubtedly makes the film far more enjoyable than it would have been if another actor had taken the part. The Long Kiss Goodnight received less than enthusiastic comments from critics and performed poorly at the box office; while not exactly a box office disaster on the level of Cutthroat Island, it was not the hit that it was expected to be. Black speculated that this was owing to the fact that the film featured a female lead and was mismarketed. On the other hand, it’s not impossible that The Long Kiss Goodnight suffered unfairly with audiences owing to its proximity to the previous film on which Harlin and Davis (then in the middle of their five year marriage, which lasted from 1993 to 1998) had collaborated. Cutthroat Island had, after its disastrous production period, gone on to become one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, and it’s possible if not likely that the then-recent memory of that much-derided film kept audiences away from The Long Kiss Goodnight. Black retreated from writing after The Long Kiss Goodnight, citing as his reasons negative response to the film alongside increasingly personal criticism of Black for being paid such a huge sum of money for a spec script. He would return to writing almost a decade later, in 2005, with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which he also directed), and this led to a reawakening of his career in Hollywood. As someone who saw The Long Kiss Goodnight on the big screen during its initial release, this writer will say that the film struck him at the time as interesting, with particularly strong dialogue (and a great performance from Jackson), but not exceptionally memorable. However, the film swiftly gained a cult following, and regularly featured in articles and books exploring the Hollywood action film – which positioned The Long Kiss Goodnight as a picture that challenged the male-dominated paradigms of Hollywood action movies. Hollywood’s attempt to make a female-led action movie also very much seemed inspired by the female-led Hong Kong “heroic bloodshed” movies – films such as Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam (1985) and David Chung’s Royal Warriors (1986) – that, during the late-80s and early-90s, began to find distribution (and cult audiences) in Anglophonic territories. This isn’t a stretch, as elsewhere 1990s Hollywood action movies were beginning to emulate Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films: for example, in the emphasis on John Woo-esque two-handed gunplay. In fact, the somewhat eccentric plot of The Long Kiss Goodnight could easily be inspired by the wacky stories of any number of Hong Kong action films. In particular, The Long Kiss Goodnight has echoes of Wong Jing’s God of Gamblers (1989). In that film, Chow Yun-Fat plays the titular “God of Gamblers” who experiences long-term amnesia after suffering an injury, but is eventually brought back into the fold of violence and gunplay. In The Long Kiss Goodnight, Davis plays small town schoolteacher and mother Samantha Caine. Eight years prior to the events depicted in the film’s narrative, Samantha was discovered, pregnant with her daughter Caitlin and apparently suffering from amnesia. At Christmas, Sam is involved in a car accident. She is thrown from the vehicle and suffers a head injury. Memories of her former life begin to return to her, cryptically and in the form of dreams. When she is attacked in her home by a criminal from her past, “One Eyed Jack” (Joseph McKenna), Sam displays a curious affinity with violence and an ability to hold her own in a fight. Events lead Sam to teaming up with Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L Jackson), who offers to help Sam uncover her past. Meanwhile, CIA Director Leland Perkins (Patrick Malahide) is chewed out by the President for losing contact with one of the CIA’s best agents, Charly Baltimore. Of course, Sam is Charly – or Charly is Sam. Sam/Charly and Mitch are therefore set on a collision course with Perkins and another CIA agent, Timothy (Craig Berko). As the film’s narrative heads towards its conclusion, Sam/Charly discovers that Timothy is Caitlin’s father. Family is a theme that bubbles beneath the surface of The Long Kiss Goodnight. (The theme of family is something that also underpinned Black’s previous screenplay for The Last Boy Scout.) Sam/Charly’s relationship with her daughter Caitlin is the heart and soul of the film and forms an integral part of its climax. However, this is also complemented by Mitch’s relationship with his estranged son, Todd. Mitch has a troubled relationship with his ex-wife, owing to his criminal past – but he is kind to Todd and clearly loves the boy. Though Mitch and Todd only share a small amount of screentime together, the pathos in an early scene featuring the pair echoes throughout the film, encouraging the audience to root for Mitch – who is in many other respects little more than a miscreant. (Given this, Black’s original plan to have Mitch killed during the film’s climax seems particularly cruel.) Both Mitch and Sam/Charly are therefore linked by their status as parents of similarly-aged children, who have challenging relationships with their child’s other parent. The Long Kiss Goodnight also references then-present tensions, exploring the “end of history” when Perkins describes Charly as “a relic of the Cold War, the kind of violent operative that has since been eliminated from our ranks.” However, as the narrative progresses, it is revealed that Perkins’ team was involved in a “false flag” operation – plotting to detonate a bomb at Niagara Falls, so that the event may be blamed on Islamic terrorists. The intention was to prove that the end of the Cold War didn’t mean the end of conflict, thereby ensuring that money would then be diverted to the CIA in order to stop the assumed threat from radical Islamist factions. With hindsight, it’s difficult not to see this through the lens of the manner in which the end of the Cold War (the supposed “end of history”) gradually bled into the War on Terror – and the assertions by conspiracy theorists that the World Trade Centre attacks, which took place a mere five years after the release of Harlin’s film, were a “false flag” used to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In terms of the film’s examination of identity and memory, there are parallels with Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop and Murphy’s (Peter Weller) relationship with the cyborg into which, after his violent death, he is transformed by OCP. As Harlin’s film opens, Sam is happy in her role as a schoolteacher and mother to Caitlin. Memories of her life as Charly gradually resurface, however – much as the “reborn” cyborg RoboCop experiences fragmented memories of his former life as Murphy. (In RoboCop, Murphy’s memories are “wiped” by OCP as part of the process through which his corpse is transformed into RoboCop, much like Charly/Sam’s memories of her former life are erased by the accident that takes place eight years before the film’s story opens.) Sam is fully “transformed” into Charly following a traumatic moment when she is abducted and nearly drowned (after being tied to a waterwheel) by Luke (David Morse), whose assassination Charly was tasked with. (It was during Charly’s attempt to assassinate Luke that she lost her memory.) Subsequently, Sam/Charly undergoes a physical transformation, cutting her hair short and dying it blonde, that is also accompanied by a change in attitude that shocks Mitch: as Charly, the previously prim and proper Sam begins to use copious amounts of bad language and even attempts to seduce Mitch. At the end of the film, after using her skills as Charly to dispatch the “bad guys,” Sam/Charly is offered the opportunity to return to the CIA. However, she turns down the President’s offer, electing instead to return to her small town life as Sam – much like the final moments of RoboCop show RoboCop, after dispatching the film’s chief antagonist (Dick Jones, played by Ronny Cox), assert his identity as Murphy when the head of OCP (Dan O’Herlihy) asks him “What’s your name, son?”
Video
The film is presented in 2160p, using the HEVC codec, and in DolbyVision (HDR 10 compatible). The presentation is in the film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.39:1. The Long Kiss Goodnight is presented here uncut, with a running time of 122:34 mins. Like a number of other Renny Harlin pictures, The Long Kiss Goodnight was photographed in Super 35. Harlin has said in interviews that his decision to shoot this and other films in Super 35 was motivated by a desire for his films to not be impacted negatively by pan-and-scan processes during their transfer to full-frame home video. Theatrical prints would be produced via matting of the Super 35 negative; full-frame VHS releases of The Long Kiss Goodnight were open-matte, revealing extra information at the top, and particularly the bottom, of the frame – whilst suffering some slight cropping along the horizontal axis. The film’s release on a “flipper” DVD by New Line Cinema in the early days of the DVD format contained the widescreen presentation on one side of the disc and the full-frame presentation on the other. Nevertheless, the widescreen presentation, which conforms to how the film was presented in cinemas, should be considered the preferred presentation of the movie. Though Super 35 used spherical lenses that were often optically superior to anamorphic lenses (in terms of sharpness and the level of detail they could transmit to the negative), the process of matting and blowing up a Super 35 negative in order to produce an anamorphic dupe negative (from which widescreen release prints would be produced) would often result in prints that displayed relatively large “globs” of grain and a reduction in detail. (This was in comparison with films photographed using anamorphic processes.) This new 4k home video release from Arrow Video is based on a 4k restoration which uses the original camera negative as its source – so therefore sidestepping the effects of the use of an anamorphic dupe negative in the production of theatrical prints. The director of photography on this picture was Guillermo Navarro, and the photography has some similarities with Navarro’s work on Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (1992) a few years earlier, and Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), released the same year as The Long Kiss Goodnight. There’s a similar emphasis on carefully-lit low-light sequences, in particular. The whole presentation displays some superb contrast levels, but this is particularly evident in low-light sequences. Deep blacks are accompanied by subtle gradation from the middle of the exposure to the toe, and highlights are even and balanced. An excellent level of fine detail is present throughout the presentation, with a richly textured image. The encode to disc is strong, and the presentation retains the organic grain structure of the 35mm film source. The colours are also satisfyingly balanced and consistent. This is particularly true in terms of the primary colours that are employed within the photography, with some strong blues and reds being particularly evident. In sum, it’s a film whose aesthetic is very much pitched in the mid-90s, Super 35 era; and this 4k presentation is very strong, filmic, and true to that style of photography.
Audio
There are three audio options on the disc: (i) a Dolby Atmos track; (ii) a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track; and (iii) a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. All of these tracks demonstrate positive fidelity, with some excellent range and depth evident particularly in action sequences. The Atmos track features some particularly atmospheric use of surround effects, particularly in the vertical channels during the climax of the film, but this isn’t “forced” or unnatural. The 2.0 track is a little sharper, by contrast, and arguable more true to the original theatrical presentation. Dialogue is clear and audible in all three tracks. Optional English subtitles for the Hard of Hearing are included on the disc. These are easy to read, accurate, and free from errors.
Extras
The disc includes the following extra features: Audio Commentary with Walter Chaw. Chaw, who writes for FilmFreakCentral.Net. Chaw speaks as a fan of the film and discusses its place within the career of Renny Harlin, reflecting on Harlin’s progression from making television commercials to directing feature films. Chaw also talks about the cast, examining Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson’s work on the picture – including Jackson’s praise for the finished picture and his attempts to get a sequel made. Shane Black’s body of work is also discussed, with Chaw examining this film in the context of Black’s other Hollywood action films. Chaw also picks up on some of the film’s themes, exploring its focus on family and in particular, the mother-daughter relationship. It’s an enthusiastic commentary track with some good insights from an action movie enthusiast. Audio Commentary with Joshua Conkel And Drusilla Adeline. Conkel and Adeline are podcasters. Adeline is a graphic designer and talks about the design of the titles. The pair reflect on the marketing of the film and Shane Black’s emphasis on Christmas, though I’d take odds with Conkel’s suggestion – made early in the track – that Black is “a man’s man,” in the sense that Black’s scripts often satirise traditional/regressive depictions of masculinity rather than blankly celebrate them. Adeline makes a good point about the influence of noir paradigms and Hitchcock’s work on Black’s script for this picture. There are lots of hidden edits in this track, which make it feel a little “choppy” at times. The track also feels quite unstructured, and the observations are sometimes a little superficial with journeys into sidebars that can be a little frustrating at times. The commentators have a good interaction with one another, though, and the track is easy to listen to. Theatrical Trailer (2:33) Image Gallery (313 images) Retail copies also include a second disc with an array of extras (listed in our comparison on the main site), but this Disc Two wasn’t provided for review.
Overall
The Long Kiss Goodnight has a strong cult following, and whilst this writer wasn’t particularly impressed with the film when he saw it on its first release, it has undeniably grown in resonance. Shane Black’s script often sparkles, though it’s not as consistently sharp as some of his other work, and Davis handles the challenge of playing what is essentially a dual role very well. (Switching between Charly and Sam, two very different characters, must have been comparable – in terms of the demands of the performance – to, say, Jeremy Irons’ performance as the twins in David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.) Samuel L Jackson’s presence anchors and grounds the film, and though arguably underexplored, Mitch’s relationship with his estranged son echoes Charly/Sam’s relationship with Caitlin and gives the film a much needed injection of pathos. Arrow’s 4k presentation of this Super 35-lensed feature is very strong, both in terms of the video presentation and the accompanying audio. The contextual material on the first disc is also good – though as we weren’t presented with the second disc (which contains the bulk of the extras for this release), we cannot comment on that within this review. Fans of the film will find Arrow Video’s release an essential purchase, given the mediocre home video presentations that have preceded it.
|
|||||
|