In Night Moves, decorated actor Gene Hackman plays a Los Angeles detective whose marriage and career are up in the air. He’s Harry Moseby – think Bosch in the 1970s – who finds that a good-paying gig might well pay the bills, but if he’s ethically opposed to the outcome, it won’t help his soul or his marriage.
In the Warner Archives Blu-ray release, Hackman stars opposite Melanie Griffith, James Woods, and a host of other well-traveled actors. He plays Moseby as hard-bitten and hard-pressed, frustrated by the soulless marriage he lives in and the grimy world of private detection that is his only outlet. With a sense of noir and grim determination, the film moves forward under Arthur Penn’s (The Chase, Bonnie & Clyde) to its spiraling end.
In the film, Moseby agrees to find an aging starlet’s niece at the same time that his wife launches a less-than-private affair. Cuckholded at home, he finds himself struggling to reconcile the issues surrounding the runaway teen (Griffiths), uncovering smuggling and murder on the way to some adventures out of wedlock on his own. Ultimately, the story proves to be mysterious, and desperate, pulling Moseby in deeper to a life he can never escape.
Special features include the theatrical trailer and a featurette on Penn, ‘The Day of the Director.’
