Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a private detective operating out of Los Angeles. He is a fiercely independent investigator, choosing to work by himself rather than choosing to get a job at an agency, even though he is frequently pursued to lend his services to the “information factories” as he calls them. His latest case involves Delilah “Delly” Grastner (Melanie Griffith), the teenage daughter of a long-deceased Hollywood producer and his selfish widow, a failed actress. Delly has apparently absconded from her Los Angeles home and disappeared without a trace, and it’s up to the resourceful Harry to try and find her. His investigation soon leads him to the Florida Keys, where he encounters Delly, her stepfather and a mysterious woman (Jennifer Warren), who begins to captivate Harry, who is secretly fighting a bitter battle with his own wife (Susan Clark) after he discovered that she was having an affair without another man. Harry finds himself caught squarely in the middle of a very unique case that involves a lot of deception and even more danger, and considering his personal life is far from easy itself, he is trapped in a confusing point in his life that very little other than the honest truth can save him from.

Arthur Penn was known as one of the great directors to hail from New Hollywood, with a great many of his films developing into wonderful and beloved works of their respective eras and genres. His most famous work is Bonnie and Clyde, but the film I personally found to be his most inventive and unique is the subject of this review, Night Moves. In all honesty, this is a film that is extremely flawed and undeniably impossible to dissect without finding numerous problems. It is a film brimming with issues, but it’s in these imperfections that Penn manages to make some profound statements, not only about the subject the film covers, but the filmmaking process in itself. This is an inherently deconstructive film, one that quietly abolishes some of the boundaries of genre filmmaking, and presents the audience with quite a fascinating example of postmodern film noir. It is perhaps not the decade’s best attempt at reinventing the genre (but when you have work like Chinatown and The Long Goodbye, then you’d understand why it would be difficult for just any film to come close to mastering the intricacies required for a good detective film), but it is still a stylish and often quite fascinating character study that may have its shortcomings, but also has a great many merits to go alongside them.

Gene Hackman is one of the great actors of his generation, and every time a new film featuring him makes its may in my direction, I am in such awe of his talents, especially when he was in his peak. His more rugged, salt-of-the-earth persona was a refreshing change of pace in an industry dominated by good looks and dazzling smiles. His work in Night Moves is amongst his best – in many ways, it is a performance that saw him take on a very different kind of character we normally tend to see from the actor, with Harry Moseby erring more towards the side of the more likeable everyman rather than the suave, polished detective made famous by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and William Powell in the heyday of the film noir. Hackman was known for his more grizzled performances, so to see him take on someone a lot more endearing and perhaps even more charming than we normally see was certainly an enthralling experience. Hackman holds this film together, playing Harry with a blend of whip-smart intuition and winsome, down-to-earth sensibility that keeps the audience engaged from start to finish. There’s a certain quality to the actor’s performance here that allows him to command the screen in a way that doesn’t require too much bombastic exuberance or excessive force, but rather a more subversive, intelligent way of taking control and ensuring the audience never looks away. It is a performance that isn’t without its own small issues, but for the most part, Hackman really is terrific, and while the rest of the cast was somewhat underwhelming (with the exception of decent work from Jennifer Warren, and a great effort by Melanie Griffith), Hackman is exceptional, with this being amongst his finest hours as an actor.

The biggest flaw in Night Moves is that it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be – it seems to be an attempt to blur genres and to bring new and unexpected elements to a specific thematic framework in a way that is inventive and unique. For the most part, it does work – the first act of Night Moves is a bona fide masterpiece – Hackman is firing on all cylinders, the film has found the right balance between the mystery and the humour, and the concept of looking at the conflict between two sides of the same individual, his professional life and his personal life, were all astonishing, and it was certainly appearing to be heading towards a very rivetting neo-noir that took a more grounded but far less enthralling route to get to the root of the story. However, it suddenly experiences quite a jarring tonal shift, when almost the entirety of the second act takes the form of some demented Southern Gothic, with Harry venturing into the Florida Keys and assimilating into the lives of this odd family who breed dolphins for a living. Suddenly, the film is a dark comedy with overtures of romance – the sexual tension between Harry and Paula become increasingly apparent, and we are never sure where this film is heading. The problem is, it isn’t clear whether or not this shift in the tone was on purpose or purely unintentional. Logically, considering the first act was so well-constructed, one would assume this was an attempt to further deconstruct the genre. It could be said that this was Penn’s way of deconstructing the sometimes over-serious nature of the film noir, by imbuing this film with quirky humour, but it just doesn’t feel all that analogous – its not that this ruins the film, or that its even necessarily bad in itself. There is just too much going on in this film, and it becomes confusing to follow the various narrative threads, so to add some arbitrary humour feels somewhat misplaced.

However, while it can be slightly unsettling, the tonal shifts in the film actually tend to add to the rugged charm of Night Moves, which makes the fact that it is not interested in being like other noir films very clear early on. This is not strictly a detective film – in fact, the mystery that forms the core of the film’s events is actually quite minor compared to some of the more potent themes and becomes relatively secondary in terms of importance to the plot. Night Moves is mostly a character study – it shows us the life of a detective in a way we hardly see – far too many of these films tend to just show the protagonist as some mysterious and conflicted person of ambigious background, whose intentions are not very clear, but are evidently deep-rooted in some form of virtuous morality. In this film, we are introduced to a detective who is struggling – his own investigation agency is privy to be shut down due to his insistence on working alone, his wife is in love with another man, and he is not particularly happy with his own career choice, even though he knows how good he is at it. This is a portrait of a detective, one where his own story is foregrounded, and the plot that would otherwise drive a more conventional noir film only serves to reveal more about the man in charge of the investigation, rather than the specific intricacies of the particular mystery. This is precisely where Night Moves is at its most significant, when it allows us to take a brief but meaningful glimpse at the inner workings of Harry’s mind as he solves a mystery – its less of a voyeuristic experience where we watch a brilliant  sleuth solve a case, and more of a film that allows the audience to feel like they are taking part in the mystery themselves. By having this story told through the eyes of a detective who may not be particularly elegant or even very intelligent, but rather possesses great gumption and a tenacity to solve a problem by any means necessary, we’re taken on a very unconventional journey, one that may be somewhat convoluted at times, but is still extremely rewarding.

Night Moves is not a perfect film – it sometimes even approaches the point of being derailed by its shifting tone and its hopelessly dense plot that doesn’t do much in concealing the innumerable inconsistencies in the story. Yet, its imperfections are what allows it to be so unique – it is a film about a detective who is perceived as being so brilliant, but actually harbours a lot of internal problems, all of which serve to motivate him to continue his work rather than to deter him from doing what he is good at. Arthur Penn constructed a fascinating film that succeeds when we look at it mostly as a character study of a certain individual trying his best to succeed when the odds are stacked against him, and he finds himself in the middle of a troubling conspiracy, which is far too overwhelming for him to handle. Night Moves is a wonderfully atmospheric film, an unconventional crime film that feels less like a film noir, and more like an absurdist comedy taking the form of a detective story. Its an inventive, funny and often extremely bleak film that may not succeed on the story itself, but flourishes as a wonderful character piece, and when it is anchored by Gene Hackman in one of his most charismatic performances, there’s very little that can truly be held against this film. It is a terrific piece, and its relative obscurity needs to come to an end, because it deserves to stand alongside some of the other innovative New Hollywood films that sought to redefine cinema and change the way stories are told.