Rhapsodies

Well ’tis the season, so It’s time for this year’s Christmas marathon. Starting things out are a pair of spy thrillers that just happen to take place during Christmas.

The first on the list, Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight, Gina Davis plays Samantha Caine a woman who showed up eight years ago pregnant with no memory. Over the years, she tried to find out who she was with the help of a private investigator, Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L. Jackson) with no luck. Fortunately, she’s managed to adjust to her new life and has decided to move on. Her first step is to attend the Christmas parade as Mrs. Claus. Her face is seen on TV where she is recognized as an assassin named Charly Baltimore. Soon people from her past are coming to kill her and she has to remember or die. 

This film was okay, with some good action. Samuel Jackson is as good as ever. 

In the next film on my list Sydney Pollocks 3 Days of the Condor Robert Redford plays Joe Turner, a CIA analyst whose job is to read books to see if nobody is unwittingly revealing CIA plots and if there are any useful ideas. One day he comes back from work to find that everyone in his office has been murdered. Now he has to avoid the killers while trying to find out who ordered the hit. 

This was a wonderfully suspenseful film. My favorite part was where Turner narrowly avoids being killed only to find himself sharing an elevator with his would-be killer, wonderfully played by Max Von Sydow.