Amnesia and Geena Davis team up for mediocre results

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): Once upon a time, there was a movie director named Renny Harlin who had an idea about how the concept of female empowerment should be translated onto the silver screen. He solicited the cooperation of his wife, Geena Davis -- who hadn't even recovered from her husband's recent flop, Cutthroat Island -- and turned her into a killing machine. Oblivious to the fact that it was this very same idea which sent Cutthroat Island crashing to the ground, Harlin blew US$70 million to realize the project, $4 million of which went to screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout) alone. The result is The Long Kiss Goodnight, a story about ... amnesia.

Well, not quite, but at least it is the starting premise. Ignoring the fact that amnesia is the worn-out staple of soap operas, the story centers on Samantha Caine (Davis), a perfect cookie-baking mom and schoolteacher in a suburban elementary school in Pittsburgh. She dotes on her 8-year-old, Caitlin (Yvonne Zigma), doesn't allow cursing in the house, and is engaged to a gentle dreamboat (Tom Amandes). All seems picture- perfect except for one thing: She can't remember anything beyond eight years ago, when she woke up on a New Jersey beach pregnant, with nothing but her clothes. She tells us that she has "focal retrograde amnesia", and that is supposed to be the end of the story.

Not so, naturally, for Samantha suddenly finds herself capable of uncanny abilities -- "killer" abilities to be precise -- such as breaking the neck of a deer with her bare hands, chopping carrots like a human Veg-O-Matic and, for an encore, throwing a tomato in the air and pinning it to the wall with a skillfully thrown knife. Then a TV broadcast and an automobile accident begin to stir up the memory of a mysterious former life.

After hiring a down-on-his-luck deadbeat private eye named Mitch Henessey (Samuel L. Jackson) to probe into her real identity, it transpires that Samantha was formerly Charly Blackmore, a paid assassin working for the CIA. Almost killed in an intricate mission, she escaped with her life but not her memory.

After learning that Samantha/Charly is still alive, the baddies (led by Craig Bierko in a superb performance) seek to eliminate her before she remembers that the CIA actually blew up the World Trade Center in an attempt to get Congress to raise their budget. Thus, Samantha/Charly and Mitch become the targets of a seemingly never-ending chase that involves a lot of spectacular pyrotechnics, including what now has become the standard science-defying sequence in explosion scenes: outrunning a flaming fireball that chases one down a corridor. Well, Keanu Reeves did it in Chain Reaction and Tom Cruise did it in Mission: Impossible, so why can't Geena Davis do it too?

This is no tightly paced character-driven noir thriller. True of most of the recent action suspense releases, it is first and foremostly a vehicle for big explosions, pointless shootouts, jaw-dropping stunts and general mayhem. Its only possible claim to originality lies in what must be intended as a feminist statement. Otherwise, why would an actress of Geena Davis' caliber keep on opting to prove that women can do all the gory things that men do, only better? Burying all references to the "sugar-sweet" screen image that have burdened her since A League of Their Own and Speechless, she even claims that she did most of her own stunts herself.

In some ways, Renny Harlin is making a travesty out of his Oscar-winning wife's talent by persistingly turning her into "Movie Action Babe No. 1". Granted, Davis is tall, confident and possesses a Diane Keaton-Annette Bening-ish pluck that appeals to some people, but she is capable of so much more.

In other ways, however, Davis has an uncanny knack for comedy, managing to fit into cartoonish shoot-'em-up roles: growling, shooting, hacking, dangling from impossible heights and wresting herself out of death traps. Whereas actresses ranging from Brooke Shields (Brenda Starr), Anne Parillaud (La Femme Nikita), Bridget Fonda (Point of No Return), to Pamela Anderson (Barb Wire) have failed to snatch the American action heroine crown, she has the necessary quirkiness to make her efforts look effortless.

But what makes Davis really effective and why she should succeed where others have failed is that she doesn't take herself too seriously. And, although she sometimes overdoes her "toughness", she may actually find herself a niche within an audience seeking the female answer to James Bond.

However, shifting between two such disparate identities as the wholesome Samantha and the ruthless Charly and somehow reconciling them in the end is certainly no simple task. The problem lies not so much in Davis' acting failure as in the movie's refusal to explore the psychological implications of a dual identity in a plausible manner.

Given the movie's vagary, Samuel L. Jackson -- memorable in Pulp Fiction and A Time to Kill -- delivers accordingly. His character is both lecherous and inept. Despite outrageously profane one-liners, he almost steals the show from Davis, the way he did to Bruce Willis in Die Hard With a Vengeance.

In any case, Jackson and Davis create laughs that we may be loathe to admit. Imagine the sight of Samantha/Charly using a dead body as a counterweight to lift her into the sky so she can shoot it out with a helicopter under the "Welcome to Canada" arch of Niagara Falls. Or better still, Samantha/Charly performing a role-reversal by beating the head of a male assailant with the pie she has just baked.

Yes, we have seen this showy, gratuitous, expansive, no- respect-for-life type of overblown extravaganza before. The Long Kiss Goodnight is a manipulative film all right, but it is a manipulative film with a sense of its own preposterousness. While we may not care a tuppence about Mitch Henessey's fate, we will probably end up laughing at his gag lines. We may also derive some guilty pleasure out of watching Samantha/Charly's many daring exploits.

In the end, enjoyment is still a matter of individual expectations. For anyone simply looking for fun or escapist entertainment that requires little to no thinking, this should fit the bill nicely. For those hoping that Harlin has somewhat come of age, waiting a few more years would be good advice.