When you make a series of videos like Reel, you can never go too long without mentioning Shane Black. And when it comes to Christmas action movies, Shane Black is the guy to turn to. The holiday spirit brought us our video on the last scout last year, and this time the Christmas novella brings us another Shane Black classic, The long goodnight kiss!
It’s funny that we don’t think about The long goodnight kiss like a Christmas movie, the way we argue about die hard all the time. But it’s OK. For guys like me, and probably for you if you watch this video, it’s absolutely a yearly favorite around this time. The film starred Geena Davis as Samantha Kane, a small-town schoolteacher who woke up with amnesia eight years ago. With no memory of who she was, she still manages to build a life for herself with a faithful husband and young daughter. That is until she finds out that she was actually one of the world’s best assassins and is hunted down by her former employers. The only way to save herself and her family is to hit the road with dodgy private eye Mitch Hennessy, played by the untouchable Samuel L. Jackson, and learn the truth about his past. We’ll come back to why Samuel L. Jackson is so untouchable in this film a bit later.
The long goodnight kiss wasn’t just another action movie. With Geena Davis as the star, playing a role traditionally meant for a man, the film was a rarity and a crazy gamble. Davis also would have seemed like an unlikely choice for this type of assassin movie, but she was married at the time to director Renny Harlin, the guy behind Die Hard 2, The Adventures of Ford Fairlaneand thriller.
Uh, he was also the director of cutthroat island, an infamous big-budget pirate movie known for being an epic box office flop that destroyed careers. Davis played into that too, and his impact on The Long Kiss Goodnight would be felt and not in a good way.
Corn The long goodnight kiss is insanely good, with Harlin doing some of the best work of his career, using the icy setting to allow Davis to pull off some really crazy tricks on ice skates. Tonya Harding has nothing against her!
Reel Action is written and narrated by Travis Hopson. Check out some previous episodes below!
