Hackman’s Everyman Has the ‘Night Moves’

In the mid-1970s, the two best detective movies in a couple of decades arrived on American screens: “Chinatown” and “Night Moves.” Everyone knows Jake Gittes, who, in the person of Jack Nicholson, returned in “The Two Jakes” last year. But Harry Moseby is less famous.

Gene Hackman, coming off his finest performance in “The Conversation” (1974), was reteamed in “Night Moves” with director Arthur Penn, who had directed the actor in the 1967 film that made him a star, “Bonnie and Clyde.” Private eye Moseby, like Gittes, makes most of his money spying on cheating wives and husbands and, in the ultimate irony, finds himself following his wife and her lover. That’s the emotional luggage he drags along as he tracks the runaway daughter of a has-been movie actress to a film location in New Mexico and then to the Florida Keys. In Florida, Moseby meets the precocious daughter (played unblushingly by Melanie Griffith) and learns that she’s out to sleep with all her mother’s lovers.

It all seems simple enough until a body is discovered in the bay and Moseby realizes that there is more going on than what’s on the surface. Like many of the great films of the 1970s, the truth lies in the realization that no one is telling the truth. And that leaves Moseby--a former Oakland Raider who is loyal, old fashioned and trusting--out in the cold, the sucker of more lies than he realizes. He’s a simple man trying to deal with a complex world.

Few actors can communicate that kind of inner struggle better than Hackman. Unlike his esteemed contemporaries--Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman--Hackman doesn’t require a role with offbeat characteristics or an overcharged personality to create an unforgettable character. For more than two decades he has essayed the flawed yet determined American everyman better than any actor.

“Night Moves” may leave some viewers a tad confused. As in another mystery classic, “The Big Sleep,” the film’s details of who did what to whom and why get a bit muddled. But the point of “Night Moves” isn’t the solving of the mystery, it’s unlocking the film’s pessimistic view that the Harry Mosebys of this world are a dying breed.

“Night Moves” (1975), directed by Arthur Penn. 95 minutes. Rated R.