BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Micitype Pretty Good

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

tomgillespie2002 Cited by many critics as one of the best and most important American movies of the 1970s, Arthur Penn's Night Moves hasn't stood the test of time in terms of popularity. The legacy of the nouvelle vague in France had inspired a whole generation of American film-makers to try new things, and to subvert genres as much as the studios would allow them. This led to a re-emergence of the film noir, a genre stuck very much in the 1940s and 50s. With its chain-smoking, loose- skinned leading men and devilish, glamorous ladies, its tough demeanour is very much a product of the time. A couple of decades later, and filmmakers such as Roman Polanski, with Chinatown, and Robert Altman, with The Long Goodbye, found new ways to explore this dark world and its shady characters, and are widely remembered for it. But no film has been as successful at cutting to the heart of what drives these self- loathing deadbeats and the manipulating bombshells distracting them as Arthur Penn's Night Moves.Private investigator and former American football star Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) works freelance, preferring to gulp down coffees during long stakeouts on his own time than to be on the payroll of a larger agency. His wife Ellen (Susan Clark) tries to shake him out of his stubborn ways, but he's just an old-fashioned sort of guy. This lone wolf approach is in his blood, as after he turns down Ellen's invitation to the cinema, he monitors the situation anyway, discovering that his wife is having an affair in the process. Meanwhile, former actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to track down her missing, promiscuous daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith). A conversation with mechanic Quentin (James Woods) leads Harry to a thrill-seeking movie stuntman, and then to the Florida Keys, where he discovers Delly hiding out with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford), and a striking woman named Paula (Jennifer Warren).As a straight-forward detective story, Night Moves will likely divide an audience. With its unhurried approach and eagerness to explore Harry's troubled home-life and self-destructive behaviour, the jarring tones may not suit everybody's tastes. Night Moves is much more about the character than the case he is on. The movie mainly succeeds in this balancing act because of the performance of Gene Hackman, an actor working at the very top of his game. In the 70s, he was part of a group of actors who rebelled against Hollywood gloss, and portrayed real people in real situations. Harry is ultimately a good-hearted guy, tragically failing to see the irony when he demonstrates his knowledge of 'check mate' moves in chess to Paula, with sight of own possible fate in the unravelling mystery. As the plot moves on and Harry finds himself caught up in far more than he had bargained for, the revelations become increasingly confusing. But I didn't care: It's the kind of convolution warmly embraced by the Coen Brothers in neo-noir The Big Lebowski. It isn't a masterpiece, but Night Moves deserves to be remembered as one of the most important American movies of its decade.

PimpinAinttEasy Dear macho males, this film is for you. It has a hero (Gene Hackman) who is a private investigator. His wife sleeps around and he has intense conversations with her and her lover. He does a lot of other macho stuff like look really intense and sit in the kitchen and eat bread without the lights on. His visage suggests that he is not to be messed with and that he can explode any minute. The kind of man who could get away with hitting a woman. The kind of man who attracts teenage nymphs. Anyway, he is hired by an actress to bring back her daughter who is staying with her stepfather. So he travels to the beautiful Key West and then he has an affair with the stepfather's girlfriend and they have some weird conversations like:"First time anybody touched my breast, was a boy called Billy Danruther. The nipple stayed hard for nearly half an hour afterward."They also discuss the two Kennedy assassinations. I am sure you guys would enjoy the really gritty hands on action sequences. They are few and far between, but the final one is amazing. There is James Woods too. But he is too over the top as a stunt man. A young Melanie Griffith prances around in a bikini. Arthur Penn sure made some strange films like The Missouri Breaks and The Chase. This is another one of them. Don't expect The Getaway or anything. There are issues with the pacing. Parts of it are quite boring. But Gene Hackman is very good in a Steve Mcqueenesque role. Best Regards, Pimpin. (6/10)

Gus Griffin As a novice, it's difficult to learn much about the film-maker's art by watching movies directed by the likes of Frank Capra or Steven Spielberg, Jame Campion or Penny Marshall, any more than you can learn much about dancing from watching Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. Their results are so seamless and apparently easy that you have to work hard to deconstruct it to see how they actually did it.Not so with Arthur Penn's Night Moves. Every poorly mortared joint glares out at you from the screen. Given a script which is at least competent, certainly fresh and bordering on perceptive in places - plus a largely excellent cast (poor Susan Clark is horribly miscast as the wayward wife, about as bad as you might expect Doris Day to be) - you'd think that the creator of Bonny & Clyde and Little Big Man would have done so much better with the tools at his disposal.Gene Hackman manfully keeps on trying to blow life into the lead character of Harry Moseby, and the script helps him do so, but the whole effort lacks conviction. As with most of the other parts. The director has failed to take his cast into that magical place where they succeed in getting the audience to suspend disbelief.Consequently, I found myself almost painfully aware of how the film was made as I was watching it. It's almost-goodness sparked a fondness in me that had me rooting for it to get better. (Sure the first quarter was pretty bad, but that doesn't mean the team can't still win the game!) It was just good enough to keep me hanging in there to be ultimately disappointed in the end.Having said that, I wasn't as disappointed as a worse movie would have left me. It wasn't actually a waste of time - I learned quite a lot from Mr. Penn's near misses.For example, spaced throughout the film were these strangely abrupt scene transitions. That heartbeat that takes you smoothly out of one scene, and the next heartbeat that leads you smoothly into the next scene, were sometimes missing. It threw you right out of the movie each time it happened. Perhaps the director was going for some kind of syncopated pace, but the effect was only truncated instead. So that taught me something about good and bad editing.When young Melanie Griffiths appeared in her very first credited movie role, nailing her part with utter conviction, she made every other player look pedestrian, including the highly experienced Hackman. It was only after she appeared on the screen just doing her thing that I realised the degree to which everyone else was NOT doing THEIR thing. As I said, Hackman almost got there, but not really. So I learned something about the way that even good and experienced actors need to be lifted into the zone by their director.And so on. The stunt work was kinda clumsy. Maybe the budget prevented extra takes, but you get the sense that more money wouldn't have fixed much.So the movie itself only rates 4 or 5 out of 10 - An 'A' level director, cast, crew and script giving us a 'B' level product. But I've scored it higher because of all the other things I got out of watching this - and the absolutely delightful debut of Melanie Griffith - which makes Night Moves worth watching all by itself. I think the only time I've liked her better was in Something Wild.

seymourblack-1 Arthur Penn's 1975 thriller begins in a very familiar style with a seedy private eye, a missing person case and a client's daughter who's gone off the rails. Although there's nothing remarkable about the investigation that follows, it soon leads into a complex mystery that involves a number of murders, a collection of suspicious characters and an investigator who's constantly baffled by the events that go on around him.Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is the down-on-his-luck, L.A. private detective who's hired by a former actress to find her promiscuous 16-year-old daughter, Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith). Moseby's investigations soon lead him to the Florida Keys where he finds that Delly is living with her stepfather, Tom Iverson (John Crawford) and his lover, Paula (Jennifer Warren). Initially, Delly doesn't want to return home but after finding a wreck of a plane and its dead pilot while scuba-diving, she changes her mind.Moseby doesn't feel proud of himself when he returns the girl to her mother who only wants her back because of her valuable trust fund and then feels even worse shortly after, when Delly's killed in a movie stunt that goes wrong. Moseby's convinced that Delly was murdered and goes back to Florida in search of answers but instead only encounters a series of further complications that leave him bewildered until the story reaches its shocking conclusion.Harry Moseby is a man who frequently feels lost and helpless. His difficult childhood had left him with a need to track down his father who was never there when he was growing up. Many years later, he did locate him but then couldn't bring himself to make contact with the old guy. When he discovered that his wife was having an affair, he didn't know how to deal with the situation and certainly wasn't able to make matters any better. Even his success in bringing Delly back home was tinged with sadness and regret because he felt partly to blame for what happened to her and during his affair with Paula found someone who was just as world-weary and self-loathing as he'd become.In visual terms, Moseby's predicament is emphasised by the number of times that he sees things distorted by glass or water and the closing sequence in which he's seen adrift at sea and going around in circles.In essence, "Night Moves" is very similar to many other crime dramas that were successful in previous decades but through its characters and a well-written screenplay, it powerfully conveys all the disillusion, despondency and distrust that were so prevalent in the period that followed the Watergate scandal. Gene Hackman is very believable and perfectly cast as Moseby and Jennifer Warren is convincingly mysterious as Paula. Melanie Griffith and James Woods impress in their roles and the supporting cast is also excellent.