Night Moves

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.

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.

The film comes down to the raw basic of film making as it tells a very suspenseful story of three environmentalist about to become Eco terrorist.

The movie's best quality is that it's real low key. They don't try to hide the purpose of the movie or why they are doing anything. They keep this artistic freedom to a low,so the movie is not frustrating or hard to follow.

Which is good because this movie is painfully slow. No real action is in the movie. All the best action is done off camera so you just have to imagine what's going on, which is not hard cause the focus of the movie is clear.

I myself found the movie enjoyable, but I will admit there a lot of slow parts that I almost fell asleep on.

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.

"You said no one would get hurt!" -Dena

I was not particularly excited going in to see this one but I was certainly interested, Night Moves is another of those movies that premiered a year ago at the Toronto Film Festival that are only now getting released in my country though this one has also taken a while to get it's release in the U.S. It was a year ago then that two films premiered at "TIFF" that stared Jesse Eisenberg, one of them was The Double and the other one was this one, both received good reviews, The Double continued to get it's share of talk while this one kind of was forgotten, still though I remembered the good early buzz that had continued throughout it's promotion so I still went ahead and saw it.

Night Moves is Directed by Kelly Reichardt and it stars Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg, Alia Shawkat, Peter Sarsgaard, Katherine Waterston, James LeGros and Griffin Newman. " Three radical environmentalists coming together to execute the most intense protest of their lives: the explosion of a hydroelectric dam-the very source and symbol of the energy-sucking, resource-devouring industrial culture they despise."

Night Moves is not a picture that I loved, I didn't it's no doubt flawed and I can see many getting way of this one but I got to say that this is a good little film that's being underseen. I am not familiar with director of the movie, I had heard about some of her pictures but she seems to be someone who divides audiences and I guess this is another picture that will divide audiences. It will not break audiences because it's weird or too complicated but because it's too simple and many will probably find it uninteresting and boring.

Though the movie certainly has a slow pace I would disagree with those who say it is boring though I got to say that I would understand those people too because I feel there's a lack of character development. I'm not saying they should have gone with some cheap clichéd sh*t and put up a background on the characters but they could have made a bit more effort. We are never truly able to understand these guys, their motivations seem awfully weak, they are basically people who want to protect the environment and all that jazz but the fact is that the movie's tone is much bleaker, these characters are completely alienated, especially Jesse's and we never get the sense of why. They basically are acting like terrorists doing some "Mickey Mouse" job that doesn't really have a great deal of importance in the big scheme of things but they take it like they are revolutionizing the world and I think that made it kind of confusing for the audience.

It was also confusing what happens afterwards, I mean was it really that surprising that someone got injured or killed, I mean that blew up a f*cking dam like tough guys but then they couldn't handle the consequences of their job that was ultimately successful. I mean this collapsing of the characters in the afterwards of the job is certainly an interesting character study on guilt, on fear and on redemption and I think it's handled quite beautifully but I still I couldn't help but to feel confused. It's kind of a paradox because that made me feel confused but it also helped me relate with the characters because they are no big timers they are just normal people, with good intentions and a heart and it's very interesting to their reacting to the consequences or their actions, their reactions aren't from a gangster where he doesn't feel anything, this the way probably a normal person would react.

The film takes it very slowly but then again it's never boring even though the movie is never really exciting or thrilling it's always at least engaging and an interesting watch and certainly quite tense to. It's a very intense film with doubt and I got to applaud the director for creating such a mood where you feel trapped, claustrophobic, very gloomy and heavy. It's a very simple story with few twists in it, very straight forward and there are not a great many deal of surprises but again I say the movie is always very tense and there's quite an emotional complexity to it all.

The performances certainly helped. Peter Sarsgaard is such a great actor, very underrated, good in everything he's been and unfortunately he's face doesn't bring audiences and because of that he usually is not given big roles, here he does have a good little role that he plays well, not a great deal of showy scenes where he lets loose his talent but still worth mentioning. Dakota Fanning is still seen as a child by many, such as myself, but the fact is that she's already taking big roles such as this one with a performance that I'm not going to lie, impressed me. She's great in this though she's not the star of the movie. The star of the film is Academy Award Nominee, Jesse Eisenberg, who gives he's best performance since The Social Network. What a good performance, very contained performance, as a seemingly shy, quiet, lonely, alienated young fella. He almost reminded me of Travis, this guy is really quite sick, very paranoid, it seems like he's always cooking up something and I mean those last 25 minutes just showcase Eisenberg's talent, he here proves that The Social Network wasn't just luck.

Night Moves is a simple yet beautifully made picture, with a slow pace but gut wrecking intensity at times and performances that alone are worth your while, it also raises up some interesting questions like "when do legitimate convictions truly demand illegal violent behavior?" and a good meditation on consequences when it comes to political extremist acts. See it!

Rating:B-