Renny Harlin and Shane Black were clearly going for an over the top, cartoon-level action flick in this 1996 outing. Consider just three bits:
- “Life is pain, get used to it,” Geena Davis tells her daughter after an ice skating accident. Later we find that the eight year old broke her wrist
- “Continue dying. Out,” Craig Bierko, the chief baddie, said to a henchman who was radioing for help.
- Blood trickling artfully down out of her nose, Davis urges the daughter to run away from the climactic bomb. But the daughter can’t bear to leave her dying mom and tells her “Life is pain, get used to it.” Of course the next shot is Davis getting up off the ground.
But The Long Kiss Goodnight is good cartoon, the way the first two Die Hards (Harlin directed the second) and Black’s Last Action Hero were. Maybe I’m just reacting to my longstanding attraction to Davis, who is both Amazonian and a red head, but I don’t think so. Because there are also lots of tight situations barely escaped and big explosions too.
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