Night Moves

Directed by Arthur Penn, Night Moves follows private investigator Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) as he agrees to track down a runaway teenager (Melanie Griffith’s Delly) and inevitably finds himself caught up in a complicated conspiracy. Filmmaker Penn, working from Alan Sharp’s screenplay, delivers a fairly standard murder mystery that ultimately fares best in its engaging, entertaining opening stretch, as the movie benefits substantially from Hackman’s predictably compelling, lived-in efforts and Penn’s irresistibly atmospheric approach to the material. It’s disappointing to note, then, that Night Moves eventually progresses into a meandering midsection that slowly-but-surely drains the viewer’s interest and attention, as the narrative essentially comes to a dead stop once Harry arrives at a Florida locale and seemingly solves the case for which he was hired – with the newfound character-study vibe hardly as engrossing or intriguing as Penn has obviously intended. And although the investigation eventually picks up again, Night Moves has, by that point, alienated the viewer to such a degree that it’s virtually impossible to work up any real enthusiasm in the story’s (impressively grim) outcome – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a distressing misfire that squanders a typically solid Hackman performance.

** out of ****