Die heiße Spur

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.

Night Moves (1975)

An odd convolution of 1940s film noir and 1970s New Hollywood. The hero is a kind of watered down Bogart—not as romanticized, and with less exaggerated one-liners (which film noir lovers will miss but which those who like realism will appreciate). Gene Hackman is terrific, and he plays Harry Moseby, a down and out ex-football player with a drained candor that makes him pathetic as much as likable. He ends up mixed up in a Dashiell Hammett kind of plot, for sure, looking for the daughter of a rich woman and then getting way over his head.

The artifacts of New Hollywood liberation are plain to see: nudity (female only) and a kind of sexed up background even when the plot is going somewhere else. This was for the sake of an audience still astonished that the movies could do such things (they couldn't before 1967) and it's still kind of raw and edgy in a lasting way. It also feels dated, too, making you wonder if it was really so sexually liberated back then.

The trail for this daughter takes us to the Florida Keys and out into the ocean. There are mysterious motives everywhere, and it's only Moseby we trust. Completely. And we even feel him starting to get a grounding for his drifting self amidst these miscellaneous people. And we see a kind of generosity that is based on this selfish need to do something right, and all its conflicting meanings. So eventually the movie is less about who killed who for this or that reason, and more about this man and his quest for clarity.

But clarity has a cost, and the movie will take several surprising turns. Not all of the plot is supported very well. We are led along at times, and frankly told things that might have been better revealed through the plot. It's not a perfectly nuanced drama in this way. These are nitpicks, for sure, because the larger feeling takes over and is commanding. And that's the lasting reputation of the film, that it pulls off this kind of modernized noir world with originality.

The director is Arthur Penn, who's great "Bonnie and Clyde" kicked off the shift into New Hollywood sensibility. (Beatty is always given too much credit for that film's audacity because he starred and funded it, but the film was Penn's at heart.) This might be called the last of Penn's great cycle from the period, and if not the equal to his 1967 breakthrough, it is in many ways more delicately felt and mature. And so in a way more watchable today a second or third time. Hackman is the one great actor here, however, and if there's a key problem with "Night Moves," it's that he almost but not quite supports the film alone. The three or four secondary characters are all of them thin, or contrived to be types, and so it falters.

See it anyway. It surprised me the way "Point Blank" from this era did. Excellent.

Night Moves is an underrated Film Noir. Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde) it is an absolutely outstanding genre piece. Gene Hackman plays an L.A. gumshoe who is hired by a well to do ex-actress to find and bring home her runaway daughter (Melanie Griffith in her first role!). What seems to be routine detective work soon turns out to be a complicated case which finally ends in murder and mayhem. There are some remarkable stunt and underwater sequences, well photographed by Bruce Surtees (Director of Photography of many Clint Eastwood action movies). Not only Melanie Griffith but also another of today's stars, James Woods, gave his screen debut in this film. See it, it is worth the while!

Night Moves is not a bad film. It's actually quite good. It is also off-beat and a just a little bit odd but not quirky.

It is not hard to figure out why a young girl has run away from home when we see her mother, a washed up, alcoholic living in the Hollywood Hills. What is odd is trying to figure out the relationship between her, her stepfather and his girlfriend in the Florida Keys where she has gone to live. It is hinted that the stepfather is not just a stepfather.

Even stranger is Jennifer Warren's odd, abrupt, salty behavior in the film and the the strange dialog written for her. At one point, Gene Hackman even tells her he is tired of her "ping-pong talk". Was that written for the benefit of the audience or did he improvise? I felt puzzled by much of her performance.

It is also painful, really painful to watch Gene Hackman's wife struggle with their relationship and her learning new things about her husband.

Yes, a strange, strange little film. The acting is almost too revealing. I can't quite wrap my brain around the whole thing. I think it will be appreciated by fans of films from the 70's.

Coming back to NIGHT MOVES a quarter of a century later is a confronting experience. I was admirer of Alan Sharp's (HIRED HAND and LAST RUN) and now it's easier to see how he'd distorted the American crime movie with the influence of the European art cinema. Much the same thing is happening in Sam Mendes' current films.

The process is knowing and resonant and the film shows Arthur Penn at the top of his game, though it didn't find the same public his most famous work. This dark intrigue stuff works, partly because it's too dense to be immediately absorbed and because the characters are so vivid - even if it is hard to believe that all these great women want to take off their shirts for Gene Hackman in his tan rug. It is however one of Hackman's best outings - whether he liked it or not.

Lots of great detail - the contrast between Hackman's study with the black and white TV where sports will kill his eyes and Yullin's tasteful home, which makes us share Hackman's loathing of the character, feeding dolphins, the glass bottom boat or the theatre viewing (which respects the different format of the two cameras for once.) The performances are consistently vivid, reflecting well on Penn, with soon to be stars Griffith (particularly memorable) and Woods running level with largely forgotten character people. Janet Ward, for one, really registers.

Even if it needs theatrical viewing to be appreciated, Bruce Surtees' dim lighting, characteristically shading eyes, is atmospheric but the post "New Wave" fad of dispensing with establishing shots and opticals is now confusing and jerky. The score irritates too.

The line about paint drying has now passed into common usage but I like "blind, Albino, s**t-eating alligators" as much.

I used to use this one to teach screen writing decades back. I rate that a good call.