Night Moves

Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) are radical environmentalists. They buy a boat called "Night Moves". They along with troubled ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) plan to bomb a dam. They buy a large quantity of fertilizer, make their bomb and deliver it on the boat.

This is a slow, methodical movie. There are so many empty spaces. It's a two hour movie that could easily be squeezed in half. It's just so very slow. Everybody is doing mainly quiet acting. Some could see in it as deep emotional acting. They can read so much into their quietness. I can only read it as a lack of dialog. There are some emotional content in the second half but it's not enough.

Okay...I was expecting more. All the movie is about the plan. A clearly stupid and poor plan. We even don't know why they are doing that. We actually don't know anything about the characters because everything is silent and green. And that leads us to a non transparent story, full of holes and doubts.

Dialogs are nearly abstract, very plain. Eisenberg can't convince us he is kind of a criminal. There's no tension and that makes it more boring.

Then, the characters change, product of a particular situation (which was patently predictable)and we are expecting the characters to be real human beings, but...they are not.

And then the movie ends. There's no much more. And...OK.

To appreciate this film, you have to be prepared for the work of Kelly Reichart, whose films tend to be slow-moving and thought-provoking. You have to be in the mood for that type of experience. For this particular film you also have to be prepared for an emotional reaction to the story of several people who take political action, violent action, and suffer its human costs.

Anyone who was young during the 1960's and 1970's will remember what it was like to debate those political issues. We all had to decide whether we were willing to take action in which someone might get hurt. Or in the jargon of Star Trek, does the life of one outweigh the life of many? It's a question we still grapple with today.

If you are willing to confront those questions, and your own answers, this film will interest you. If you don't like to think about such things, skip this film and watch something more superficial.

Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, if nothing else, proves that the radical environmentalists of our time can be just as irritating as those who hold up signs blasting the alleged lies of global warming at crowded, echo-chamber rallies. The film concerns a group of three young, arrogant eco-terrorists, so concerned about the environment and so appalled by the blatant corporatism of America that they decide to set an example and wake-up the sheep of the country but staging an explosion of a hydroelectric dam in Oregon. Think about that last sentence and find the flaw in their young minds.

The three radical environmentalists are John (Jesse Eisenberg), Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard). John and Dena have come up with an elaborate plan to stage the bombing, but it's up to Harmon to actually construct the bomb, using ammonium nitrate among other things, to help carry out the attack. Co-writer/director Reichardt follows these characters in a way that's quiet, low-key, and not very menacing, given the subject matter, ripe for commentary and subjectivity. She chooses to shoot everything through a lens of softness, making good use of natural sound, light, and other devices to help the story move forward. Reichardt, nor the film's trio of environmentalists, are in any particular hurry whatsoever. The film is ten minutes shy of two hours and makes diligent use of its time.

A great deal of the last hour shows the mental effect the actual bombing has on its characters. We only hear the ammonium nitrate activating and exploding and do not see the actual explosion occurring, nor do we need to, for this isn't that kind of film. In true indie- film fashion, we are focused on what the bombing's long- term effects are on the film's characters, who feel guilt when they learn the rush of the dam currents drowned a man camping near the explosion. They never intended to injure or kill the sheep of the country, but rather, just inform them of what their actions are doing to the ecosystem. However, they now have a mess on their hands and must deal with it in their own manner. They split up and cut connections with each other, but grow weary of one another possibly ratting out the entire group when the rush of guilt becomes too difficult to bear.

The three eco-terrorists of the film are not very likable people. They are arrogant and self-absorbed, not willing to share their knowledge, but beat you over the head with it until your covered in metaphorical blood and shame for your alleged lack of interest or concern about Mother Nature. They are no better in their propagating of their idea of "the truth" then their greatest enemies, climate change deniers or the uniformed, are at iterating their own "truth."

However, that's not to say our three characters (I don't see them as protagonists, antagonists, anti-heroes, or any literary classification whatsoever) don't make substantial points in their arguments. One of the best moments of the film comes when the idea of the rich vs. the poor is elaborated in such a philosophical way it begs a mention in this review. The characters talk about how the poor live and work in the moment, operating on a day-by-day basis, using what available resources and cash they have in the moment. The rich, on the other hand, operate in the future, buying many things with credit, investing in long-term business plans, and so forth. To them, this is why the environment is such in a disastrous position because we've chosen to allow our greed to thrive in the moment and left our tab - environmental dangers, debt, and income inequality - for later, or worse, for somebody else.

Night Moves is a nice showcase for low-key filmmaking in the sense that we can still have a point, or even several points, be inferred or illustrated without obnoxious overtones and frustratingly overwritten dialog. To some degree, the film is underwritten because its characters lack evident personality, but it all comes back to the ideas I discussed in my reviews of 17 Girls and The Bling Ring in that the characters explored in these films have no personality other than their immediate gratifications through violence, theft, pregnancy, or what-have-you. To give them illustrated personalities would be giving them too much credit. The emptiness of the characters in this particular film are crafted nicely by Eisenberg, Fanning, and Sarsgaard, particularly Eisenberg who, in The Social Network, managed to play the same sort of role. Quiet, unassuming, but uncompromising in his brilliance and his approach to the world. For some, this may be one of the best films you've never heard of, and for me, it's one of the most surprising independent efforts of its year.

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard. Directed by: Kelly Reichardt.

I was actually surprised after watching this movie, having firstly noticed the given low ratings.

Starting with the characters, the difference in the way each one of them feels about the environmental problems is clear and straightforward. While Harmon, being an ex-con, performs his role in a more detached way, Dena, and mainly Josh, possess deep feelings about them. Dena learnt about them and made up her mind supported in what she claims to be scientific facts. Josh appears to have a more romantic and purist approach, despite his paranoid outbreaks and trust problems. This actually helps the viewer to start building an idea about how each one of these characters will react to the approaching outcome.

OK, it is a slow paced movie, which I don't see as something necessarily bad. Actually, I think it contrasts beautifully with the sentiment of urgency that the problem demands and which they want people to acknowledge. Also, about the kind of numbness in Josh expressions during almost all the scenes, I simply cannot see them as emotionless or empty. I rather think (and felt) that he was the most engagingly involved and disturbed about environmental unbalances, almost in a traumatized way, which I think is reinforced by some plan shots, silent and numbing, taking a few more seconds than we are used to.

Ultimately, it is a movie about the human condition, about good people, with good reasons, doing wrong things.