The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

The Long Kiss Goodnight is a 1996 American action thriller film co-produced and directed by Renny Harlin, and produced by Shane Black and Stephanie Austin with screenplay written by Black. It stars Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Amandes, Yvonne Zima, Brian Cox, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko, and David Morse. The story follows an amnesiac schoolteacher (Davis) who sets out to recover her identity with the help of a private detective (Jackson) when they discover a dark conspiracy.

Plot:

Samantha Caine is a schoolteacher in small-town Honesdale, Pennsylvania, living with her boyfriend Hal and her daughter Caitlin. Eight years earlier, she was found on a New Jersey beach, pregnant with Caitlin, and totally amnesiac. Having never remembered her real name, “Samantha” has hired several ineffective private investigators to discover her past, the latest being the down-on-his-luck Mitch Henessey.

Over Christmas, Samantha is involved in a car accident and suffers a mild concussion; upon recovering, she finds she possesses skills with a knife that she cannot explain. Shortly thereafter, their home is broken into by “One-Eyed Jack”, a convict who escaped from jail after seeing Samantha’s face on television. Samantha demonstrates her fighting prowess by killing Jack bare-handed.

Box office:

Over its opening weekend, the film grossed $9,065,363 from 2,245 theaters, coming in third among films opening that weekend. It grossed $33,447,612 in the US and Canada and $62,009,149 internationally, for a worldwide gross of $95,456,761. Renny Harlin blamed the film’s poor performance on confusing advertising, but Shane Black wondered if it might have been more successful if it were about a man: ‘It might have made more money, they told me, but it had to be a woman.