The Long Kiss Goodnight

Jackson plays Mitch Henessey, a third-rate sleuth who has been hired by Samantha to discover her lost identity.

For eight years, Samantha has lived a quiet life in a small town, working as a primary school teacher and raising her young daughter.

In a road accident one Xmas, she suffers a blow to her head which triggers memories of Charly, her former self. "I'm coming back", Charly warns. "You're gonna love me".

At the same moment, her enemies also discover her new identity. Charly's former target, now in a maximum security prison, sees Samantha on TV, riding on a float in the Xmas parade. He escapes to take his revenge - Charly had partially blinded him.

If you practice meditation or any form of personal development, you will be aware that we have different parts of our unconscious minds or psyches. These may have different agendas and sometimes conflict with one another. In Nonviolent Communication, these are sometimes caleld "jackals".

In this film, Davis's character, Samantha, is chopping carrots one evening when suddenly she starts chopping furiously. Her hand has taken on a life of its own. Her partner hands her other vegetables to chop. "I'm a chef!", she exclaims gleefully. Then she throws a knife, with an onion impaled on it, across the room where the knifepoint penetrates a cupboard door. "Chefs do that", she says.

The two leads excape to search for the truth of who Samantha/Charly really is. At one point, Henessey comments on Charly's emergence. "You used to be all, 'Fooey, I burned the darn muffins'. Now, you go into a bar and ten minutes later, sailors come running out".

When the different parts of ourselves, our "subpersonalities", start to emerge, it's not usually this dramatic. But it can be challenging, frustrating or even frightening. For more about this, see Why Affirmations Don't Work.

For more about meditation, see this article about empathy.

Samuel L. Jackson, the coolest man in Hollywood, delivers my al.l-time favourite line of his. "When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and upmtion".

Davis reprises her famous line from Thelma and Louise, which refers to an act which is anatomically impossible.

This film has plenty of narrow escapes, gun battles, explosions, high tension and fun. Buy it on DVD now.