This is probably at the top of my list of
guilty pleasures. So over the top. So ridiculous. But I love this film. I
don't understand people who don't. Were they brought up on Godard? Having
been a long time fan of Hong Kong's Girls with Guns films where over the
top and ridiculous was the norm, this film hit home. Women action films in
Hollywood have become much more common these days - lots of them in the past
ten years - but not 25 years ago. There had been the Pam Grier films, Ripley
from Alien, Buffy, Cleopatra Jones, the French film La Femme Nikita but not
a whole lot comes to mind and none of those had the body count this one does.
Or the fun factor. Hell, it has Samuel Jackson doing Samuel Jackson. There
isn't much better than that. Now no one thinks twice when females kick ass
or shoot a bunch of guys dead in films like Red Sparrow, Everly, Salt, Haywire,
Atomic Blonde, Peppermint, Ava, The Old Guard or even when the killer is
a kid as in Hanna. But this one is still the best.
I would guess that most people have already seen this film but if not - here
is the basic flavor of it. Gena Davis plays a sweet teacher and homemaker
to her young daughter and her boyfriend. All is good in her life but she
is bothered by the fact that she woke up about eight years before all mashed
up and with no memory of her previous life. In one scene she is chopping
vegetables faster than we can blink and then throws the knife into the wall
and proclaims to her boyfriend and daughter "I must have been a cook!". Not
exactly as it turns out when a man shows up on her doorstep trying to kill
her. That doesn't work out well. For him. She has hired the cheapest and
most larcenous detective to find out who she was - ta da - Samuel Jackson
in a role made for him - brash, funny, cowardly but ultimately heroic. The
two of them go out on the road and slowly her memories return. As do her
instincts. What she had been trained for. Holy shit. She was an assassin
for the US Government and some of them are worried and want her dead. A whole
lot of them in fact. But she had been the best. Great film.
