Left Field Cinema

WARNING: Contains Spoilers Throughout

Film is often considered a director’s medium, it is an art form which showcases a number of different artistic, creative and technical talents, but none more so than that of the director. Or at least, that’s the way it appears to most. In the same way that Theatre is considered a writer’s medium, or Reality Television is considered a casting medium, cinema is director-centric and shows no signs of changing. So why is it that the writer can make a name for her or himself in Television and Theatre but not within Film? Within Theatre the reason is clear, plays are re-used again and again and most of the time these new productions will have different directors, a director in the Theatre might make a name for himself amongst his peers or in local circles, but usually if a production of Romeo and Juliet is fully booked it is because of Shakespeare’s words and the director will probably not even be known to an audience member until they glance down at their programme just before the curtain raises. Within television, the writer often dominates the director because of the fast turnaround. There is no time for producers or directors to go through endless re-writes so, usually, what the writer pens is what is seen on screen and often a solitary credit is given with no need for additional writers to be credited. Also most modern television series have a uniform look and content which the director can not alter no matter how much they may want to, thus the most noticeable creative forces in television are the writers, who can control and often dictate the content more freely than anyone else. In cinema however, the writer is fairly low on the totem poll, as with Hollywood blockbusters for example, studios will sometimes hire two writers to write separate screenplays then hire a third writer to cobble together the best parts of the two stories, creating the narrative equivalent of Frankenstien’s Monster (Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand used this technique). Arguably the only writers working in film today with any semblance of power or who maintain their own voice from paper to screen are the writer/directors who can happily chaperone their ideas to the big screen and maintain creative control. However there are exceptions to this and screenwriter Shane Black is one such exception; or at least he was until he decided to write and direct the 2005 thriller Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Black has a very short C.V, the highlights of which include Lethal Weapon (1987) which Black wrote when he was in his early twenties, The Last Boy Scout (1991) Last Action Hero (1993) and the subject of this week’s article, The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). Black was not immune from studio interference, even his biggest success Lethal Weapon had its ending re-written to leave the film open for further adventures of the main protagonists, Black even wrote a draft for Lethal Weapon 2 which was rejected because it called for Mel Gibson’s character to be killed off in the last act. Indeed Black claims that his script for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was the first he’d ever written with no interference from the studio. Despite the interference Black managed to maintain his voice within those previous films and his status as a screenwriter in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s was unparalleled. Despite his scripts being directed by the likes of Richard Donner, Tony Scott, John McTiernan and Fred Dekker - they are clearly his films as much as theirs. His writing credits stand as a body of work as much as any of the aforementioned directors’ filmographies.

The Long Kiss Goodnight follows the story of a School Teacher, Samantha Caine (Geena Davis), who lost her memory almost ten years previously and has since built a new life for herself. One fateful night Samantha is involved in a near fatal car accident which appears to have knocked some of her old memories back into her, suddenly she knows how to snap a deer’s neck and can throw knives with precision accuracy; she neglects her daughters broken wrist as her maternal side fades away and crucially disarms a shot-gun wielding intruder more effectively than any law-enforcement officer could in her place. By a startling coincidence (or rather clumsy contrivance) Sam’s former employees at the CIA (back when she was known as the spy/assassin Charly Baltimore) learn of her existence and set about expunging her before she and private ex-cop turned investigator Mitch (Samuel L. Jackson) discover new information about Sam’s past. What follows is a game of cat and mouse as Sam and Mitch attempt to learn more about Sam’s personal and professional history and avoid being killed by government spooks who are attempting to track them down. As the hunt continues, more and more memories from Sam’s former life as Charly resurface as well as Charly’s deadly predatory instincts. Amnesia and spies are like America and Apple Pie - they’ve always gone well together. Parallels can immediately be drawn to Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity (2002), of course The Long Kiss Goodnight pre-dates that film by six years, but the novel on which The Bourne Identity was based was written many years earlier, and Roger Young’s first film adaptation was released eight years earlier. There are other examples: George Seaton’s World War II thriller 36 Hours (1965), Paul Verhoeven’s Science Fiction Actionier Total Recall (1990), Amir Mann’s The Fifth Patient (2007) or Philip Noyce’s Salt (2010). Having the spy unaware of their own identity and the secrets that they may harbour in the back of their mind is a brilliant conceit and one which The Bourne Trilogy in particular has managed very effectively. With The Long Kiss Goodnight it is less impressive but still provides an interesting dramatic framework, for where Jason Bourne’s personality remains relatively stable as his memories resurface (and indeed he is disturbed by some of his actions in his former life) in The Long Kiss Goodnight the new personality is slowly overwhelmed by the former. Our protagonist transforms from a warm, fuzzy, maternal and frumpy schoolteacher to a carefree, ruthless and sexy spy. Her physical appearance changes, she cuts her hair and dyes it blonde, she takes up smoking and dresses in black, but the tantalising prospect of the two personalities battling with each other for superiority is never truly realised and the resulting compromise between the two identities (demonstrated by Sam growing her hair long but keeping it blonde and wearing a maternal yet sexy dress in the final scene) is not the most satisfactory of resolutions. Perhaps only one moment when Sam asks her daughter “shall we get a dog?” before lighting the fire which will kill several of the villain’s henchmen, manages to capitalise on the concepts comic potential - if not the dramatic. Black had a chance to make the gun battles and explosions secondary to the battle between the two personalities, to make Sam the protagonist and her alter ego Charly the antagonist - but that chance is squandered. However this sort of psychological battle is not what Black is known for; there is a particular formula to all of his scripts, and also several re-occurring elements. The Long Kiss Goodnight has an odd couple at its heart, as with Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang; epitomised here by Sam’s white spy and Mitch’s black private investigator (a slight variation on the black man/white man, Austrian man/American child, straight man/gay man combinations he’s used in the aforementioned films). The Long Kiss Goodnight is set at Christmas (as is Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) it features a torture sequence (something also featured in a number of his previous scripts and before it became fashionable to do in other American productions), there are two villains, a younger and an older one - a boss and his violent second in command who does the dirty work. Other scenes or ideas are often repeated in Black’s work, such as breaking necks, a sniper sequence and hiding a gun near the groin because men are afraid to frisk other men in that area. But whilst maintaining the usual Black staples and featuring solid if limited performances from Davis, Jackson, David Morse and Brian Cox (as a retired Spy master) the film does suffer from Renny Harlin’s hackneyed direction and messy editing (the dream sequences in particular are abominable and do not cut well with the films reality.) Harlin makes some dire music choices and Alan Silvestri’s score has already dated significantly, the action sequences are overwrought and the moments of emotional drama are largely laughable. Some of the casting is also poor, in particular Craig Bierko as the films primary antagonist, who looks like he’d wondered onto the film from the set of a Gillette advert! And Patrick Malahide as his boss who is woefully un-sinister. Harlin has continued to prove himself to be an unremarkable and unimaginative (if irritatingly successful) director, and there is nothing in his directorial choices here to prove otherwise.

But despite its numerous and obvious flaws, The Long Kiss Goodnight is highly entertaining and this is due to a strange combination of Black’s flare for witty one-liners and the unintentional comedy of Harlin’s direction. The script is easily Black’s funniest, often within the dialogue between Mitch and Sam, Black’s dialogue when combined with the right comic timing is often so rapid and funny that you may miss a line or two whilst you recover from laughing at the previous line. As with his other scripts, the sharp wit is what audiences remember long after the film is finished, Brian Cox in particular steals every scene he’s in, an example being the aftermath of a frankly preposterous sequence where Sam and Mitch escape an exploding grenade by jumping out of six-story building, the fireball just misses them as they fall, Sam then uses an automatic weapon to break-up the ice on the frozen lake below as they fall, so that both she and Mitch land in freezing cold water rather than on the hard ice which would undoubtedly have killed them. Cut to the freezing Sam and Mitch in Cox’s car, Mitch loudly boasts “we just jumped out of a building!” to which Cox, unimpressed, quickly replies: “Yes it was very exciting and tomorrow we’ll go to the zoo.” Whilst this sort of banter is clearly designed to solicit laughs, some sequences of the film are hilarious for other reasons. The Long Kiss Goodnight boasts possibly the most idiotic motive for a films villain in the history of cinema: their plan is – wait for it - to detonate a bomb in the middle of a sleepy town and wipe out thousands of innocent people in order to secure more anti-terrorism funding from the President who has recently invested their money in a health-care system. Putting aside the currently relevant political stance of this motive, the ludicrousness of this aspect of the film is perhaps only matched by the films climatic bridge based battle which is so ridiculously contrived you can’t help but find it funny, as Sam steals the lorry with the bomb in it (with relative ease), drives it to the middle of a bridge with no other vehicles passing, has a knife fight with the main villain who is thrown into the water below, only for him to catch a ride with a helicopter and try and kill her again, Sam then shoots him off the helicopter where he lands on the lorry which is primed to explode, with only seconds left on the bombs timer, Mitch, who we’ve presumed was dead in a previous sequence, is miraculously alive and for some reason in one of the other villains cars, races to Sam’s rescue and whilst they drive away from the lorry all the other villains drive towards it (even though they know the lorry has a bomb on it which can’t be stopped). The lorry explodes killing the main antagonist who is still lying on top and catapulting the henchmen and their many cars in every direction and the badly wounded Mitch some how manages to avoid every single one of these flying automobiles as they explode on impact with the ground! Whether this was part of Black’s script or part of the aforementioned interference (which extended to re-writing the films ending so that Mitch survived) we may never know, but either way it’s Harlin’s complete incompetence that makes the sequence so hilarious, over blowing the concept as far as it will possibly go. With sequences as absurd as this – who needs comedies? But despite action set pieces as preposterous as this, it is the films wit that audiences remember long after the film has concluded. It is a highly quotable film thanks to Black’s particular brand of acerbic sarcasm – my favourite moment of the film comes when Sam and Mitch are leaving New Jersey, Sam boasts that she once got herself out of Beirut so getting out of New Jersey shouldn’t be a problem, to which Mitch replies: “…don't be so sure. Others have tried and failed. The entire population in fact”. Black’s dialogue should not be underestimated and in years to come The Long Kiss Goodnight will be remembered as a Black rather than Harlin film for this very reason.

M.Dawson