Night Moves

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.

Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) are radical environmentalists. They buy a boat called "Night Moves". They along with troubled ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) plan to bomb a dam. They buy a large quantity of fertilizer, make their bomb and deliver it on the boat.

This is a slow, methodical movie. There are so many empty spaces. It's a two hour movie that could easily be squeezed in half. It's just so very slow. Everybody is doing mainly quiet acting. Some could see in it as deep emotional acting. They can read so much into their quietness. I can only read it as a lack of dialog. There are some emotional content in the second half but it's not enough.

I went to the theater, a bit afraid I'd be on the receiving end of Enviro-Preaching. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find something different. This was actually a suspenseful thriller about paranoia taking hold after the commission of a major crime.

The environmental aspect was just a means to move the story along. Although the story involves eco-sabotage, the basic premise of the fallout from paranoia could have fit in a story about something similar like a robbery gone wrong, etc.

I was tickled to see the counter-culture hippie family eating bacon, and the self-righteous radical enviro-warriors owning gas-guzzling full-size pickup trucks. One of the guys, for all his professed love of the earth, treated his property like a pig sty. I don't think these and other little treats were accidents.

On the negative side, the movie was a bit on the slow side. Not horribly slow, but just a little on the plodding side. I think there were a few too many shots of the main character staring into space, having deep thoughts. Maybe it was constipation, I don't know. And the ending? Definitely could have been reworked, as it was rather disappointing.

In spite of these moderate flaws, I enjoyed this movie very much. It's well worth checking out.

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.

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.