A review by Brooks Rich
I want to talk about two guys today, Renny Harlin and Shane Black. I have covered Renny Harlin before when I praised the awesomeness that is Deep Blue Sea. See the review here: https://cinemabasement.blogspot.com/2019/05/fin-ema-basement-deep-blue-sea.html. I think Renny Harlin gets a bad rap. People tend to focus on his films that flop and ignore the awesomeness that is in his filmography. Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger are great action movies as is the film we are looking at today.
Shane Black is a screenwriter of legend who sadly faded for a time after this film performed poorly at the box office. Black is responsible for the dreadful film The Predator from last year but I won't hold that against him. He wrote one of the best action films of all time with Lethal Weapon, which made him the hottest screenwriter at the time. That legacy carried on until the sell of this script, which Black sold for upwards of four million dollars, an insane amount of money at the time.
Geena Davis plays Samantha Caine, a woman living in a small town in New Jersey who has been suffering from amnesia for the past eight years. One night she is in a car accident and suffers a concussion, which begins to jog things in her mind. She also becomes very handy with a knife. She teams up with a private investigator, played by Samuel L. Jackson in one of my favorite roles of his, she had hired to find out things about her and well things get violent.
Geena Davis is another one who gets a bad rap. She took the hit for the box office bomb that was Cutthroat Island, Harlin escaped the fallout, and after this film her career kind of stalled. That's a shame because she is fantastic in this. She has action chops and she and Jackson have great chemistry. I love Davis in Beetlejuice but I think this is the best performance of her career.
Shane Black is doing some of his best writing in this film. He is the star if this film really. His dialogue as always is on point and as always, it's set on Christmas. If the blog wasn't covering Hitchcock, we would be doing Shane Black month for December. Christmas is his number one trope, some films more than others.
Another trope of his that I don't think gets mentioned as much is that the second in command of the villains is always worse than the big bad. In Lethal Weapon Mr. Joshua is far more intimidating than the General. Here we have Craig Bierko as the ruthless and cruel Timothy, a man from Samantha's past and a totally shit heel of a character. Timothy might not be as a sadistic as Mr. Joshua but he's still a great villain who we can't wait to see get their comeuppance. That's the thing about Shane Black villains. It's always satisfying when the hero takes them out.
This is a great action film and a perfect alternate Christmas viewing. It's on Netflix right now. Give it a watch.
I want to talk about two guys today, Renny Harlin and Shane Black. I have covered Renny Harlin before when I praised the awesomeness that is Deep Blue Sea. See the review here: https://cinemabasement.blogspot.com/2019/05/fin-ema-basement-deep-blue-sea.html. I think Renny Harlin gets a bad rap. People tend to focus on his films that flop and ignore the awesomeness that is in his filmography. Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger are great action movies as is the film we are looking at today.
Shane Black is a screenwriter of legend who sadly faded for a time after this film performed poorly at the box office. Black is responsible for the dreadful film The Predator from last year but I won't hold that against him. He wrote one of the best action films of all time with Lethal Weapon, which made him the hottest screenwriter at the time. That legacy carried on until the sell of this script, which Black sold for upwards of four million dollars, an insane amount of money at the time.
Geena Davis plays Samantha Caine, a woman living in a small town in New Jersey who has been suffering from amnesia for the past eight years. One night she is in a car accident and suffers a concussion, which begins to jog things in her mind. She also becomes very handy with a knife. She teams up with a private investigator, played by Samuel L. Jackson in one of my favorite roles of his, she had hired to find out things about her and well things get violent.
Geena Davis is another one who gets a bad rap. She took the hit for the box office bomb that was Cutthroat Island, Harlin escaped the fallout, and after this film her career kind of stalled. That's a shame because she is fantastic in this. She has action chops and she and Jackson have great chemistry. I love Davis in Beetlejuice but I think this is the best performance of her career.
Shane Black is doing some of his best writing in this film. He is the star if this film really. His dialogue as always is on point and as always, it's set on Christmas. If the blog wasn't covering Hitchcock, we would be doing Shane Black month for December. Christmas is his number one trope, some films more than others.
Another trope of his that I don't think gets mentioned as much is that the second in command of the villains is always worse than the big bad. In Lethal Weapon Mr. Joshua is far more intimidating than the General. Here we have Craig Bierko as the ruthless and cruel Timothy, a man from Samantha's past and a totally shit heel of a character. Timothy might not be as a sadistic as Mr. Joshua but he's still a great villain who we can't wait to see get their comeuppance. That's the thing about Shane Black villains. It's always satisfying when the hero takes them out.
This is a great action film and a perfect alternate Christmas viewing. It's on Netflix right now. Give it a watch.
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