Night Moves [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Harry Moseby is a private investigator with a marriage that's falling apart and an unwillingness to deal with his own personal issues. He used to play pro ball for Oakland; now he gets by with divorce work. He likes to solve chess problems. He's smarter than you think. One day he gets a call from a friend who says he's got a case for Harry. A 16-year-old girl, daughter of an alcoholic former small-time movie star and a deceased Hollywood mogul, has run away. Harry tracks the teenager down to an island off Florida and the home of her stepfather, Tom Iverson. Iverson and his wife, Paula, run a small charter boat operation. The days are filled with hot sunshine. The nights with puzzles and temptations. Harry intends to return the girl to her mother, but lands up to his eyes in murder, Hollywood stunt men, stolen Mexican artifacts and emotional betrayal.

Night Moves stars Gene Hackman as Moseby. It's one of his best roles. Arthur Penn directed and I'd put it up there with Penn's best. Several things make this movie so good. First is the coherence of a complicated story. At times Moseby is a step or two ahead of us. Some times we're a step or two ahead of Moseby. The solution, however, comes as a logical but surprising revelation to both Moseby and us. All the elements were there if we'd only noticed them. Penn's direction keeps us engrossed in the story and in the action. Even when Moseby is dealing with his wife who is having an affair, in part because of Moseby's own emotional distance, Penn keeps us involved and looking forward to the next part of the story.

Equally important, Night Moves features some first rate actors whom we believe in as their characters. After Hackman is Jennifer Warren as Paula Iverson, a complicated mixture of honesty and evasion. Paula is edgy, with a quick mouth and ping pong talk. She looks straight at you when she challenges you. Edward Binns as an aging stuntman gives another fine performance. He's tired, experienced and has seen it all. Melanie Griffith as Delly, the run-away sex nymphet, gives an excellent performance in her first billed role. She was 18 when she made the movie. Strong performances also are given by John Crawford as Tom Iverson, Janet Ward as Delly's usually drunk mother who is dependent on Delly's trust fund, Susan Clark as Harry's wife, Harris Yulin as her lover and James Woods as a repellant mechanic.

The movie steadily builds tension and interest as Harry tracks Delly down and meets Paula and Tom Iverson. Then one night Paula takes Delly for a late night swim and Harry decides to tag along. Delly strips off and dives in nude while Harry looks uncomfortable and Paula just smiles. Then Delly comes up screaming. Paula turns on the underwater lights and they peer through the glass bottom. Not too far down in the water they can see the remains of a small plane. In the cabin, fish are still nibbling at what's left of the pilot's face. At this point the movie picks up a lot of steam, with Harry determined to find out what's going on. The end of the movie is violent and surprisingly poignant. Night Moves is a movie worth having.

The DVD transfer looks just fine, maybe a little soft. There is one light-weight extra called The Day of the Director about Penn. It didn't seem worth sitting through.

Right from the word go you know that this film is never going to lose your attention. Never spoonfed you have to make sure that you follow the film's intricacies as one trip out of the room and you will lose the plot altogether, (a bit like Gene Hackman's character in the film). The film however does deserve your full attention and the viewer is fully rewarded for watching with an ending that will leave you gobsmacked. Rife with Murder, Mystery and suspense the classic ingredients to cook a tantalising broth.

Part of the thrill in watching this great film lies in the sense of discovery. Made in Hollywood in the early 1970s by a first-rate cast and crew, Night Moves disappeared soon after release and has largely been neglected ever since.

Rarely seen on television, and not easily available on DVD, Night Moves has gradually attained recognition, at least in some quarters, for being a fascinating detective thriller with a post-Watergate subtext. A revisionist detective movie was not to the public's taste (just as the Missouri Breaks, a revisionist western, similarly failed at the box office). And yet Night Moves, with a script by respected Scottish novelist Alan Sharp, contains a fine performance from Gene Hackman, and was directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde).

Although it was released in 1975, Penn filmed Night Moves late in 1973, extensively reworking Sharp's script (originally titled, The Dark Tower). Penn hadn't released a movie since Little Big Man in 1970. During this three year break, he seemed to suffer some sort of personal crisis, and claims only to have agreed to make Night Moves on a whim; it was in fact originally a Sidney Pollack project. The film follows ex pro-footballer Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), an LA private investigator who is searching for the runaway daughter of a faded movie actress. Moseby, meanwhile, discovers that his wife is having an affair. We soon realise that Moseby is a man who seems disconnected both from himself, and those around him. As the plot proceeds, Moseby uncovers clue after clue, but seems to lack the facility to see and understand the reality of his own situation.

Arthur Penn, speaking of the film's origins, referred to the Kennedy assassinations, and the sense of despair and pervading lack of optimism in American life. He saw the script that he and Alan Sharp developed into Night Moves as a detective story where the detective is cut adrift from his own life and the problems that surround it. The solution, once it arrives for Moseby, only continues the despair, rather than being a traditional detective movie solution.

With these intellectual concerns in mind, Penn created a most unHollywood-like thriller. Some critics have referred to the sort of revisionism seen in Robert Altman's version of The Long Goodbye, where the moral values and discipline of Raymond Chandler's creation, Philip Marlowe, were completely jettisoned. But what Night Moves does first is offer us a rounded, complex character as its private eye hero, not a debasement. From the first few scenes we see him as a man who is ill at ease in his life, and whose gut emotional response is to investigate, to snoop and weigh up, even in terms of his wife's infidelity.

Look out for a young James Woods as a mechanic, and Melanie Griffith playing the role of Delly Grastner, the runaway. DVD extras include the theatrical trailer and an interesting 8 minute featurette, The Day of the Director, shot during production of the film.