THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)

In this high-concept pitch passing for an original movie idea, Geena Davis plays the action figure passing for an original character: an amnesiac mom whose violent super-agent past comes to town to assassinate her!  (Standard doings in 1996.)  Of course, Hollywood’s always made high-concept ideas into movies good and bad, still does.  But there was something of a mania for them after DIE HARD/’88 hit big.  (Now, the hunt is for interwoven comic book super-hero franchises.)  But from the late ‘80s thru the ‘90s, you could not only ‘take a meeting’ via HCFP (high concept/fast pitch), but raise actual development cash with a lot of Hollywood studio execs by calling your project ‘DIE HARD on a Bus . . . on an Ocean Liner . . . on a plane . . . in a Cabaña . . . at a Putt-Putt.’  (The only thing Hollywood story execs like better than a five-minute pitch is a canceled lunch date.)  The heyday for these things only ending when pitches went full-circle as DIE HARD IN A SKYSCRAPER.’*  Pure coincidence that this period perfectly mirrored Major League Baseball’s Steroid Era (1994 - 2004)?  Pumped up mediocrities soon forgotten.  With even the truly talented ones quickly expunged from the record books.  That’s what we’ve got here, from masters of the debased form writer Shane Black and director Renny Harlin.  Reheating their hot plate dinner for Davis whose amnesiac mom tries to remember what in her past has suddenly put her in harm’s way.  Helped by private investigator Samuel L. Jackson (his character in over his head, but vamping to good effect), they work their way up to a vast conspiracy from her real past.  A few character turns still pay off (David Morse perfect as a possible past romantic interest) and the eventual plot uncovered weirdly prescient of 9/11.  (Yikes!  In 1996?)  But the bloat for bloat’s sake undeniable.  So too a lack of facility with intimate kinetic action when the steroids aren’t pumping up and destabilizing the bigger things.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The joke, for the three readers who don’t get it, is that DIE HARD was in a skyscraper.