I really like Gene Hackman, but for the life of me, I think he’s a hard actor to pin down. What is the ideal Gene Hackman role? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him turn in a bad performance, even when the movie itself was terrible. So, really, tell me Hackman is in just about anything, and I’ll probably be pleased. Take, for example, 1975’s Night Moves. He plays a private detective with a lot of personal problems who gets a case to go find a teenage girl for her mother. There’s the usual sort of sleaze and moral ambiguity that fits both a good noir and a 70s antihero sort of movie, and it sounds like something that would be right up my alley.
Wikipedia tells me it was something of a flop when it came out but has since come under a critical reevaluation. That also sounded promising. Was it?
Former football player Harry Moseby is a private eye whose wife Ellen (Susan Clark) would like nothing more than for him to get out of the business. But Harry gets a job from fading starlet Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward), one where Arlene needs Harry to find her teenage daughter Delly Grastner (a young Melanie Griffith in her film debut). Delly ran off, and Arlene, divorced from Delly’s father, only has a trust fund as a source of income, but she can’t access it unless Delly is living in her house. Harry isn’t there to judge much of anything. He just has a job to do, one that takes him into the film industry to deal with a variety of producers, stuntmen, and Delly’s sketchy mechanic boyfriend Quentin (a young James Wood). The trail eventually takes him to Miami where Delly is staying with her stepfather Tom (John Crawford), but she seems reluctant to leave, and the people there are behaving a bit suspiciously.
On its own, that would be fine, but it turns out Ellen is having an affair, and Harry is good enough at his job to find out on his own. What, if anything, Harry will do about that is initially unknown, and his reactions are not really what anyone may expect. The problem, though, is Harry’s work is sending him to the other side of the country, and that isn’t exactly an ideal way to either end or fix things with Ellen.
This was a cool movie. Hackman gives another good performance, and the mystery is truly a head-scratcher. His Harry is a different sort of noir detective. He’s not Sam Spade, even when Ellen’s lover Marty (Harris Yulin) suggests Harry just throw a punch like Bogie would during a confrontation. If anything, Harry tries to stay calm while pursuing answers, sharper than he appears to be, and very patient with Delly even as he needs to bring her home to get paid. He’s a normal-seeming guy surrounded by people with secrets, all of them acting oddly because they know things he doesn’t.
Of course, it is a noir, so it isn’t likely to end well for any of its characters. Harry may be in over his head, surrounded by people engaged in activities that may or may not have anything to do with Delly, activities she happens to be around for, and that she may or may not be in more trouble than even she knows. It’s the sort of movie where Harry doesn’t know as much as he needs to know, and it is going to cost him in the end. I wouldn’t say that Night Moves is on par with the decade’s best, but it is a lot of fun. It really did deserve that critical reevaluation.
Grade: B
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