In Cutthroat Geena Davis plays the role of a traditional pirate, modeling herself after Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. In The Long Kiss Goodnight she seems to use Arnold Schwarzenneger as her model. According to her spiel on the talk shows, her desire to prove how tough she really is led her to do all her own stunts.

And there are plenty of them. This movie is really little more than multiple action adventure situations tied together very loosely by something resembling a plot.

And like all of Schwarzenegger's movies where there is a helpless, dependent female, so too, does Geena Davis has a relatively helpless sidekick, played by Samuel Jackson. Its a role than probably few actors would have the courage to undertake but Jackson is really very fine.

What is not so fine in The Long Kiss Goodnight is that director Renny Harlin doesn't seem to understand that there is an imaginary line in the collective mind of the jaudience, and as soon as the film crosses this point, it just becomes ridiculous. I'm not sure exactly when the line is crossed in The Long Kiss Goodnight, but I do know that by the end of the film, the line is no longer even in sight. Indeed, I would not have been surprised by any eventuality in this film, which is just as well, because the most far fetched and ridiculous things do happen.

The plot, thin though it might be, is fascinating. A first rate governmental spy was supposedly killed, but instead turns up as a housewife with amnesia. After an appearance in the holiday parade which is broadcasted on television, her killers and her colleagues realize she is not dead, and come to rectify the situation. Meanwhile, she has a car accident and her memory starts to return.

Feminist critics will not doubt ponder what The Long Kiss Goodnight tells us abo‡ut women. Certainly, the movie screams that women can do anything, since the film seems to be little more than Geena Davis's version of Helen Reddy's "I am woman hear me roar." But there is a cost. Geena's splint personalities in the film highlight the fact that women can be either be career oriented, or home oriented but not both. As Charley, the governmental spy, we see that this women is not only the greatest spy alive, she can also outkill all of the men and singlehandedly destroy a mission that has been on the drawing board for over nine years.

But to become a truly great spy and killer, Charley has to kill the side of herself that is homely and mothering. She does this by symbolically killing the long flowing brown hair of the mother character, and replacing it with the short bleached blond hair of the spy. So maybe the message of the movie is that women can be the greatest mothers, assassins and cooks, but just not all at once?