Review of Night Moves (2014) by Maksim B — 31 Jan 2015

Night Moves is one of those pretentious indie-festival participating movies which are hard for the mainstream audience to enjoy and not always entirely rewarding for those who are fans of independent art-house productions. Bleak and quiet, this is a sort of controversial delivery which depicts the leftist eco-movements in a way that would certainly not please environment activists.

The movie starts as a pure environmental drama as three radicals prepare and execute a terrorist act within the US, blowing up a small dam. To the surprise of many, Night Moves moves away from it environmental beginning and becomes a psychological thriller which studies in details the characters, the fears and behavior of the three terrorist in the aftermath of what they did. A story that is restrained, down-to-earth and limited to the world of the three radicals: Josh (Jesse Eisengberg), Dena (Dakota Fanning) and Harmon (Peter Sarsagaard) it remains purely minimalistic even after its characters are torn apart emotionally.

Unfortunately, instead of building up on the minimalism, Kelly Reichardt's movie somehow fails to to completely involve the audience. Unlike the other recent eco-radical movie The East, Night Moves is far more down-to-earth and realistic, but the connection between Reichardt's story and the viewers is blown in the beginning when the dam gets blown up. There is simply no climax, nothing that could be used as nail-biter and soon the interest in the characters disappears and is replaced by indifference about what is going to happen in the end.

As a whole, Night Moves has a quire intriguing concept, showing the environmental radicalism not as a global idea, but through the eyes of three marginal characters, estranged from the normal environmental society. This certainly makes the movie a worth-seeing one, but the lack of tension build-up deprives it from being a real festival hit.