Review of Night Moves (2014) by Harry W — 20 Aug 2016

Tackling the concept of ecoterrorism with a talented cast, Night Moves sounded like a captivating drama.

Ecoterrorism is not a concept that I've seen handled to any major extent in prior films, so Night Moves presented some real innovative potential to me as a viewer. The intentions of Night Moves clearly aim to focus on the protagonists scheming to destroy a dam and how they cope with the aftermath. Since this is essentially the full extent of what happens in the story, the film has to use a slow pace as a means of extending it to feature length. With a slow film that only has this much happening in it, the dialogue is key because it has to present thought-provoking concepts to match the themes in the narrative or at least some interesting characters. Unfortunately, everything in the film feels rather blank.

As the main characters in Night Moves are radical environmentalists who have committed an act of terrorism, they are extremely introverted characters who keep to themselves as a means of remaining unnoticed in society. Since they have to remain silent about their actions, this limits the amount of discussion that goes on in the film and leaves the main actors to predominantly rely on a series of facial expressions to say everything about their characters. As a result, we are given very little insight into the mind of the characters. It's hard for a film to be character-driven when the central protagonist is such an elusive one who relies on the concept of his identity to intrigue viewers rather than any actual content to match it. The motives of the main characters are easy to understand, but any reason we should actually care about them seems to go completely unnoticed by the writers. Trying to find any such reason while sitting through such a slow and subtle story is not the kind of experience I advocate. By the time the film had completed its first hour, I felt like I had seen material that had been stretched for about three times as long as it needed to be. This pace of story development remained consistent over the feature so that by the time the film was over I felt as if I had barely even watched half a feature. As a whole there is a lot of relevant subject matter in Night Moves, but it is ultimately a production too simplistic to capitalize on this.

There are certainly many things to enjoy about Night Moves such as the fact that it has a morally ambiguous nature which leaves audiences to decide where they stand while the fact that it has such nice scenery ensures that there is some imagery that comes with it, but the entire film just seems really empty. The main characters don't have much to say and the musical score appears at a very rare rate since director Kelly Reichardt insists on letting the atmosphere develop on its own. As a result, viewers are left with a series of shots depicting actors staring blankly into the distance. The shots last for extended periods of time with little movement or editing, so dramatization is absent in Night Moves. The problem is that with characters like this, the film could really use some. Simply put, Night Moves is a very slow film where nothing happens. I'm sure a lot of this occurs because Night Moves is a low budget film, but 113 minutes of it is far from satisfaction. By the end of the experience, I was so numbed by it all that I had completely forgot I had just watched an entire film. Since there isn't enough in the plot to really constitute an entire story, I wouldn't necessarily say that I had.

But as overly subtle as everything is, I will admit that I have a certain admiration for the leading performance of Jesse Eisenberg. The first thing Jesse Eisenberg displays in Night Moves is an extreme sense of restraint. Though he is the most dominant feature of the screen during the beginning of the film, Jesse Eisenberg doesn't actually speak any words until 8 minutes into the film. It's mainly shots of him expressing an intense state of mind through simple silence, hinting at some kind of surrounding mystery. Though the script never allows us to see all that much of it, Jesse Eisenberg really delivers an intensively introverted performance where he peaks his lines as if he has a perfect understanding of every direction the conversation will go in. Given that Jesse Eisenberg's most distinctive feature as an actor is his ability to deliver lines at a swift rate while still remaining coherently intelligent, it's impressive to see how well he can maintain himself when doing the exact opposite. Jesse Eisenberg's leading performance in Night Moves is a really innovative display of his wider talents, and his consistent engagement with the part proves to be the best thing about the film.

Dakota Fanning also makes a strong presence. Having a long-running legacy for the many roles she took on as a child and in her teenage years, it's a strong step forward to see Dakota Fanning upgrading to such serious material. Similar to Jesse Eisenberg, she very much keeps to herself and says everything about her emotional state through her facial expressions. She does this all with a strong sense of restraint herself, thinking in depth about what she is going to say and just what level to say it at. Her performance is one rich with realism, and the chemistry she shares with Jesse Eisenberg is effectively intense in supporting it all. Dakota Fanning brings a credible boost to her talents with a very adult-oriented performance in Night Moves, and it is one where she exhibits strong control over her character.

Night Moves boasts a very innovative performance from Jesse Eisenberg, but the rest of the film around him becomes weighed down too heavily by an extremely simplistic story and incredibly slow pace without any interesting dialogue or character development to offer any intellectual thought or character development.