Night Moves

Maybe he would find the girl… maybe he would find himself

NIGHT MOVES (18)

D: Arthur Penn

Warner Bros (Robert M. Sherman)

US 🇺🇸 1975

99 mins

Crime/Thriller

W: Alan Sharp

DP: Bruce Surtees

Ed: Dede Allen & Stephen A. Rotter

Mus: Michael Small

Gene Hackman (Harry Moseby), Susan Clark (Ellen Moseby), Jennifer Warren (Paula), Edward Binns (Joey Ziegler), Harris Yulin (Marty Heller), Melanie Griffith (Delly Grastner), James Woods (Quentin)

Gene Hackman delivers a fine performance as Harry Moseby, a private investigator hired for a missing persons case, only to discover something far more sinister, whilst also dealing with his wife’s infidelity and affair with another man.

Arthur Penn directs from Alan Sharp’s screenplay, and both take a gritty and realistic approach to the material, rather than action tropes you’d associate with similar films around the same time, complete with a grimly, dark ending that is very much against the usual Hollywood style.

Unappreciated when it was released in 1975, it has retrospectively become one of the more respected neo-noirs of the 1970s. Gene Hackman did receive a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor for his work, but was criminally shut out at the Oscars, as was the film itself, which at least deserved to be in the conversation for its screenplay and music score.

7/10