Tödliche Weihnachten

Not a box office success; no-one really knows why. It may have failed simply because of its title. It looks as though you need a two-word tough-guy title to attract a sufficient proportion of the idiot crowd - "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon", "Hard Weapon", "Die Lethal", etc. - talking about "the long kiss goodnight" will get you nowhere. But for once Renny Harlin has made a GOOD action movie. A large part of the reason for this lies in the fact that the central character, Samantha, earns our affection and interest early on. As she becomes Charly again, we're torn: we certainly want Charly to thwart the bad guys, and all that; but we don't want her to lose touch with Samantha in order to do so - even though we like Charly, too. Geena Davis bestows all of her considerable charm on both halves of the central character. Samuel L. Jackson plays second fiddle for a change. It turns out he's good at it. That was a compliment.

Intelligent, far superior to anything in the "Die Hard" series - if I were more cynical I'd add, "it's not surprising that it didn't do well", but I don't really feel that way; it IS surprising that it didn't do well.