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P.I. Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) takes a missing persons case involving a 16 year old Hollywood brat (Melanie Griffith) that’s disappeared. His life begins to fall apart even as the pieces of the puzzle in his mystery come together. The more that Harry discovers about the case he’s working on, the more likely he is to get killed in a simple missing persons case. “Night Moves” has a plot almost as convoluted as “Chinatown” with performances equally as rich. Featuring the irst film appearance of James Woods (in a supporting role) and the second film appearance of Melanie Griffith (her first was in the film “Smile”) “Night Moves” failed at the box office because it wasn’t the right film at the right time. If it were made around the time of “Body Heat”, “Night Moves” might have done a whole lot better playing in theaters. The intelligent, well written script by Alan Sharp (“Rob Roy”) and taunt direction of Arthur Penn (“Little Big Man”, “Bonnie and Clyde”) make this low key thriller a worth while investment of time for movie fans. Avoiding big explosion and overblown performances, “Night Moves” features one of Gene Hackman’s finest performances generating enough explosive moments for two or three feature films.

We get a vintage featurette on the making of the film that provides lots of behind-the-scenes footage. The featurette acts as both a promo and allows Penn to comment on his approach to film directing as well as the various issues that dog a film director prior to, during and after principle photography. It’s actually a very good promo. We also get the original theatrical trailer for the film. ---