The modern blockbuster was born and “The Godfather” movies rethought our ever-evolving take on “The Greatest Film Ever Made.”īut when I think of the era, it’s of solid, bleached and washed-out thrillers (The notorious Eastmancolor film stock?) with chewy dialogue like this one, co-stars like Warren and Hackman swapping tough, sunbaked lines with a world weary fatalism that matched the age. So many movies of the ’70s seems to reset their genres, and invent new ones. The “MacGuffin” driving all this is as arbitrary as the twists.Īnd the deaths-that-might-be-murders are a little tricky to reason out, for the viewer if not for Harry Moseby. There’s mourning after deaths, alliances are broken and then too-abruptly re-aligned. I think they shot some of the LA scenes - not the movie-within-the-movie “location shoot” - in Sanibel, too. The plot’s geography feels off, in a coast-to-coast jaunts sense. “What happened to your face?” “I won second prize in a fight.” It’s a big bath.” “Maybe some other time, when I’m feeling really dirty.”Īnother character always looks freshly beaten (Woods). This character was “down on my knees to half the men in this town,” and given to crude come-ons. There are “accidents,” deaths, and movie stunts set against infidelity and bad parenting, and loads of frank talk about all of it. Harry’s search will take him onto the set of director Joey Ziegler’s ( Edward Binns) latest and into the Florida Keys, where the kid has fled to hang with her stepdad ( John Crawford) and his fishing/diving charter assistant and maybe paramour ( Jennifer Warren, never better). James Woods plays a lowlife mechanic who works on film sets, fixing car and airplane engines, one of Delly’s paramours. “When we’re all as ‘free’ as Delly, there’ll be rioting in the streets.” This was her first speaking part in the movies. Delly is 16, “liberated,” sexually active and the role all but set the tone for Melanie Griffith’s career for years and years afterward. Scotsman Alan Sharp’s workmanlike script - he later wrote “Rob Roy” for Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange and Tim Roth - turns Hackman into a long-retired football player who uses his size, his wiles and a little unexplained polish to charge on the high end and support himself and the working wife ( Susan Clark) in middle class comfort.Īn ex actress ( Janet Ward) who divorced well commissions Harry Moseby to track down her wild child/wayward daughter. Penn (“Bonnie and Clyde”) took a dip in the Big ’70s Noir Revival” (“The Long Goodbye,””Farewell My Lovely”) in a sexy, sordid story that captures LA and the celluloid film business of the day at its most louche and the laid back Florida Keys (Sanibel Island, actually) before Jimmy Buffett, McMansions, mass tourism and hurricanes ruined them. It’s got Gene Hackman, stepping into stardom after “The Poseidon Adventure,” Arthur Penn behind the camera and that sun-faded cinematography of Bruce Surtees (“Dirty Harry,” “Play Misty for Me”) that is the epitome of the way the era looked on film. “Night Moves” is one of those ’70s to early ’80s Hollywood noirs you channel surf by, get a taste of and say “I need to come back and catch this bad boy from the beginning.”
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