The Long Kiss Goodnight

Pull out your Shane Black checklist ‘cause this one’s got ‘em all.  Black and white leads team up to combat evil.  Check.  White lead is crazy and black lead is more stable.  Check.  Secret government operations are the main driver of the plot.  Check.  Christmas setting.  Check.  Witty dialogue.  Check.  Frequent location hopping.  Check.

This is a B tier film for Black and director Renny Harlin though.  The major problem is the story is hard to follow and seems unnecessarily confusing.  It’s a total rip off of “The Bourne Identity” (the books, the Matt Damon movies hadn’t come out yet) involving a woman with amnesia discovering she used to be a government assassin.  When an old foe attempts to murder her she goes on a journey with a private investigator to dig up answers.

Geena Davis (The Fly) stars as Samantha Caine/Charly Baltimore (good name) and she does an alright job.  She has to play two vastly different characters, one a jolly corny school teacher and the other a take no shit stone cold killer, and mostly pulls it off.  What’s important is this was a high profile Hollywood action movie starring a woman which was practically nonexistent at the time.  And Davis is a solid actress who can tussle with the big boys when it comes to executing the tougher moments and be heartfelt with the tender ones.

Sam Jackson (Die Hard with a Vengeance) steals the show though as Mitch Henessey (another good name).  He has a rough past involving a stretch in prison and a lifetime of questionable choices.  But at his core he’s a decent man who’s trying to be a stand up father to his son and he genuinely wants to help this woman figure out who she really is.  At the same time he’s game for taking on the bad guys despite it being an extremely dangerous mission.  Jackson slips into this role so naturally with all his badass swagger it’s a lot of fun to watch.

When it comes to the action unfortunately it’s just ok.  They went for some large set pieces like a shootout in a huge multi-story train station and a massive bridge sequence finale involving cars, trucks, helicopters and some giant ass explosions.  I don’t know if it’s the way these scenes were shot or edited but they don’t have the impact they should.  It might be that I only have a basic understanding of what’s going on plot-wise so I’m not as invested.

I mean the movie’s kinda fun but it’s definitely missing coherence.  And while Black has good ideas, some of the most humorous dialogue he’s ever written and a cool as shit title there’s too much fat that should’ve been trimmed away.  For example Henessey becomes a superfluous character halfway through once Charly Baltimore’s assassin personality takes back over.  She remembers everything and is a warrior who can take care of herself.  She doesn’t need Henessey anymore and the movie acknowledges this by literally kicking him to the curb.  But she changes her mind and lets him tag along for the hell of it.

Oddly there’s also too little explanation.  It’s pretty frustrating to not have a grasp on where the characters are going and why they’re doing what they’re doing in any given scene.  I don’t know why this road trip with Caine and Henessey begins in the first place.  The destination is unknown until they’re already driving.

And there’s one particular part that hasn’t aged well at all.  Spoilers for this paragraph.  So it turns out the CIA plans to detonate a bomb in Niagara Falls, NY so they can prove there’s terrorist activity and get their funding increased.  They’ll just blame it on Islamic terrorists.  Now obviously the filmmakers couldn’t have predicted 9/11 but they got eerily close.  They even say about 4,000 people will die which isn’t too far off from the 3,000 that actually did.  Creepy.  The reason this is a negative for the film (albeit unintentional) is because all of a sudden I’m thinking about the horror of 9/11 when all I wanna do is enjoy a silly action movie.

So there’s no rush to get to this guy.  However, if you’re looking for a Christmas action picture to add to your rotation for the holidays this’ll fit the bill.  Otherwise everyone involved has made better stuff.  The big blockbuster Harlin and Davis did right before this, Cutthroat Island, is a much better picture in my opinion.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.  See you next year!

Hanukkah (2019)

As the movie says, “we need more Jewish horror films”, so we have this now.  But I’m gonna come right out and say this isn’t very good.  I appreciate what it’s trying to achieve but it falls really short of attempting to establish a holiday horror classic in the vein of Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine or even cult favorites like Silent Night, Deadly Night.

One huge problem is there isn’t much of a story.  The son of a serial killer, dubbed the Hanukiller by the media, grows up to take over where his father left off.  He seems to murder at random though and doesn’t only target who he deems to be bad Jews.  Other than that it’s your usual group of partying teens hanging out and getting picked off.

And these kids are some of the most obnoxious I’ve ever come across in a slasher picture.  They constantly bicker with each other over petty bullshit and spit out asinine jokes.  They’re hateful, thoughtless and uninteresting.  Plus they look like they range in age from teenager to middle aged and some have Russian accents and I don’t understand these people.

On top of this the filmmakers cranked up the debauchery.  There’s a ton of nudity and gore.  It’s all for entertainment’s sake and doesn’t necessarily feed into the infinitesimal story.  And some of the shit is torture porn which I’m not a fan of.  At the same time this is an area where they spent some money because those effects look pretty good.  There’s one gag in particular that’s sorta clever where the killer cuts off the top of a neo-Nazi’s skull (which has a tattoo of a swastika on it), peels off the skin, cleans it up and wears it as a kippah.

While that one idea is incredibly gruesome at least it’s a dark twist on something Jewish which the movie doesn’t take enough advantage of.  One of the most glaring examples is the generic title.  But I’ll give them credit for a few things like the badass looking boney menorahs, keeping the killer in the shadows so his brimmed hat and long trench coat give off an ominous vibe (and makes him look like The Undertaker), spinning a dreidel right before dispatching a victim and carving the scar of David into a corpse’s chest.  There’s also a part where the killer skins someone alive to remove their tattoos so the body becomes acceptable for burial in a Jewish cemetery.  Now I’m not Jewish so I’m sure there are a lot of other nods that went right over my head.

For being such a low budget movie they managed to attract some names to be in it.  PJ Soles (Halloween, Carrie), Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Charles Fleischer (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Zodiac), Dick Miller (Gremlins, The Terminator) and Sid Haig (The Devil’s Rejects, Foxy Brown) all make appearances.  This was Miller and Haig’s final film with Haig also producing.  He’s almost unrecognizable here though because he lost an insane amount of weight due to illness towards the end of his life.  He probably gives the best performance in the film as the Hanukiller and it’s a non-verbal one to boot.

Additionally Kane Hodder (stunts: Friday the 13^th Part VII, Demolition Man) gets a stunt credit and Harry Manfredini (Friday the 13^th) gets a music credit.  Eben McGarr used his connections as a horror event coordinator to secure all this well known talent and get the movie made.  It’s strange to me that this guy is such a horror fan because the film feels like it was done by someone who was told what slasher movies are like but hadn’t actually seen one before.  I think it goes beyond lack of filmmaking experience.

Sadly this isn’t the defining Jewish horror picture that I hoped it would be based on the premise and the poster.  It’s surprisingly aimless considering the relatively simple goal the filmmakers were aiming for.  It also has insufferable characters and shows off too much nasty carnage for my taste.  The prize is still up for grabs if anyone wants to tackle this category.