★ 9 / 10
Take a swing at me Harry the way
John Chard
Take a swing at me Harry the way Sam Spade would. Night Moves is directed by Arthur Penn and written by Alan Sharp. It stars Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren…
Take a swing at me Harry the way Sam Spade would.
Night Moves is directed by Arthur Penn and written by Alan Sharp. It stars Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Susan Clark, James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, Kenneth Mars and Janet Ward. Music is by Michael Small and cinematography by Bruce Surtees.
Former footballer turned private detective in Los Angeles Harry Moseby (Hackman), gets hired by an ageing actress to track down her trust-funded daughter Delly Grastner (Griffith), who is known to be in Florida. With his own personal life shaken by his wife's infidelity, Harry dives into the Grasten case with determination. Unfortunately nothing is as it first seems and it's not long before Harry is mired in murky goings on...
It sounds kind of bleak. Or is it just the way you tell it?
The locale is often bright and sunny but that's about the only thing that is in this excellent neo-noir. Harking back, and doffing its cap towards, the noir detective films of the classic cycle, Night Moves is ripe with characters who are either dubious or damaged. Protagonist Harry Moseby is thrust into a melancholic world that he has no control over, but he doesn't know this fact. As the mystery at the core of the dense plot starts to unravel, there's a bleakness, a 1970s air of cynicism, that pervades the narrative. Culminating in a finale that's suitably dark and ambiguous.
Harry thinks if you call him Harry again he's gonna make you eat that cat!
Alan Sharp's (Ulzana's Raid) terrific screenplay is appropriately as sharp as a razor. Dialogue is often hardboiled or zinging with wit, and the conversations come with sadness or desperation. Be it chatter about a fateful chess move, sexual enlightenment or the pains of childhood and bad parenting, Sharp's writing provides fascinating characters operating in a tense thriller environment.
Listen Delly, I know it doesn't make much sense when you're sixteen. Don't worry. When you get to be forty, it isn't any better.
Arthur Penn brilliantly threads it all together, as he hones a great performance out of Hackman and notable turns from the support players, he smoothly blends action with pulsing unease. There's nudity on show, but in Penn's hands it is never used for gratuitous purpose, it represents dangerous fantasies or dented psyches. Small's jazzy score is a fine tonal accompaniment, and Surtees' Technicolor photography provides deft mood enhancements for the interior and exterior sequences.
Biting and bitter, Night Moves is essential neo-noir. 9/10
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★ 7 / 10
67/100 A P.I. is hired to find a
Dr_Nostromo
67/100 A P.I. is hired to find a missing girl but there's more going on than just that. This was a thoroughly solid drama with excellent acting and writing all…
67/100
A P.I. is hired to find a missing girl but there's more going on than just that. This was a thoroughly solid drama with excellent acting and writing all around. What was really nice was the P.I. Moseby character. Rather than play the stereotypical hard drinking, morally questionable guy ready for conflict, Gene Hackman gave us a genuinely nice guy full of empathy and a need to do the right thing, regardless of where it goes. Even his discovery of his wife's infidelity is treated with maturity and constraint. Really a unique character and overall, a great character study. -- DrNostromo.com
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★ 6 / 10
Good film by a very good director with a great actor
izzynfrank
NIght Moves falls into that category of movies that was not so loved when it came it but since time has passed, people have come around to it. It also benefits…
NIght Moves falls into that category of movies that was not so loved when it came it but since time has passed, people have come around to it. It also benefits from being from that new golden era of cinema, the 70s, where the films showcase a gritty side to characters, often played by some of the best anti-hero actors of all time -- Hackman, in this case. Night Moves is a good movie and a lot of fun but it has some limitations which keep it from being more than that.First of which, the story really doesn't make sense. It's clear when the case is more or less solved about an hour in that the movie is really going to be about something else. In this case, it's more about Hackman's character, a guy who despite his love of things like chess, can't seem to really figure stuff out. So we are taken through his marriage, his wife's infidelity. an attempted reconciliation, etc. All that stuff is great for a great actor like Hackman who makes you feel how lost he is. The problem is that the ties that connect that to the real story, that of the art smuggling, which is the real mystery, are very thin. Also, the ties that connect the plot points of the smuggling story are very week. Too much coincidence, too many people happen to be exactly where they need to be. Too much crossing the country - - LA to Florida in the blink of an eye. One second Gene Hackman is chasing James Woods around LA on a motorcycle. The next scene, he finds him in Florida. I read that the film was shot in 1973 and then shelved until 1975, meaning that there must have been issues with it then. There must have also been a lot scenes cut, because a lot is in there, it's just hidden very deeply with no way to get at it. I think this is a film to check out and enjoy for some very good elements. I just don't think we can put our blinders on and make it a 70s classic. Good film. Worth a watch.
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7.1/10
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Great movie. RIP Gene.