Night Moves (2013)
Drama | Thriller

Kelly Reichardt's suspense-thriller Night Moves is the story of three radical environmentalists coming together to execute the most intense protest of their lives: the explosion of a hydroelectric dam. Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard, The Killing) is a former Marine, radicalized by tours of duty overseas. His life in the military is behind him, but at heart he remains excited by the prospect of mayhem and destruction. Dena (Dakota Fanning, The Twilight Saga) is a high-society dropout who's moved west and cut ties with her family, edging ever deeper into radical politics. And Josh (Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network), their leader, is a self-made militant, devoted to the protection of the earth by any means necessary. As the three plan, carry out and then witness the fallout of their attention-grabbing act of sabotage, they find their own personal limits tested on a journey of doubt, paranoia and unintended consequences.

Storyline: Josh and Dena, two young environmental activists, are planning a large scale act to force the world to think about what they're doing to the environment. They pull in Harmon, a man with a sketchy past, to help them pull off their big plan. However, unforeseen consequences bring a whole host of guilt, paranoia and other problems, and their ultimate act will change themselves more than the world around them. Written by Anne Campbell

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 1, 2014 -- As someone who has lived most of his life in the Pacific Northwest, I can confirm it rains here. A lot. Maybe not quite as much as some people imagine, but more than enough to keep rivers and streams roaring through a verdant green paradise. That water power also means that there is equally abundant cheap electricity to be had. Of course that also means the once freely flowing rivers, including the mighty Columbia which separates Oregon from Washington, have been dammed to within an inch of their lives over the course of several preceding generations. The dam issue has been at the forefront of environmental activism in this region, and despite the reactionary attitudes of the three eco-terrorists at the center of Kelly Reichardt's halting step toward the mainstream (no pun intended), Night Moves, several concrete obstacles that have prevented the free flow of various waterways have indeed been breached—legally, and with general if not unanimous consensus that this was the correct way forward. Perhaps central to Night Moves' depiction of radical environmentalists running amok, those who were not in agreement about this or that particular dam removal have fallen into two camps. The first is comprised of those who feel that any (or at least most) environmental damage done courtesy of the dams is a necessary and even acceptable tradeoff for the benefits provided, including of course plentiful inexpensive electricity. The second is more along the lines of the central trio of the film, those who feel that any dam or environmentally injurious structure or activity needs to be dealt with more aggressively. In other words, one dam being breached is simply not enough. The ironic thing about Night Moves is that it posits three desperate people lurking in the rural environs of my home state of Oregon, plotting to destroy a dam with an explosive laden boat. But Oregon is certainly among the most generally environmentally aware states in the union, if not the most. We after all were the first state to adopt a so-called "bottle bill", making the return of recyclable beverage containers necessary to recoup a prepaid deposit. We have a pristine and totally public beachway the entire distance of the Oregon coast which is kept miraculously clean due to volunteer efforts like the vaunted SOLV organization. The green energy movement here is alive, well and even flourishing (my own wife works in this industry, which runs the gamut from "glamour" technologies like solar and wind to the less well known but at times even more productive techniques like geothermal, which helps to heat and power thousands of homes in Oregon's southern cities like Klamath Falls). And so Night Moves has one strike against it from the get go, at least for those of us who live in this region: most people here are already totally aware of the debate over issues like dams, fish recovery and the like, and while our region has indeed been visited by eco-terrorists, in this case it's a bit like (to horribly mix ecological metaphors) bringing coal to Newcastle.

Reichardt has become a critical and indie darling with her small scale, intimate and somewhat discursive outings like Meek's Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy. Night Moves represents a subtle shift in Reichardt's approach, if not her overall sensibilities. There's still a potent political and even economic subtext here, but Night Moves, while almost maddeningly discursive at key moments, is fairly straightforward from a narrative standpoint. The film opens with Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) standing on an immense dam which is generating hydroelectric power. Though we can't quite make out everything that's being said (at least, not without turning on the optional subtitles), the two are concerned that there are no fish ladders at the facility. When the two later attend the screening of an apocalyptic documentary warning about an imminent ecological collapse, it seems clear that these two are at the very least devoted environmentalists.

Reichardt, who co-wrote the film with Jonathan Raymond, plays her cards fairly close to her vest in the early going, but it's clear something is going on between these two, especially once they purchase a boat (called Night Moves, hence the film's title) from a somewhat confused suburban man who is shocked to be handed a pile of cold, hard cash for his craft. Once the two hook up with ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgard), and the hard drinking former military guy pulls out newly minted fake IDs for the trio the story is clarified—the three are already knee deep in plans to blow up a nearby dam as an act of protest meant to awaken a supposedly sleepwalking public about what their incessant need for energy actually means to the environment.

While putatively a thriller, Night Moves might be better appreciated as a character study wrapped within some of the tropes of mystery films. The interplay between the three characters provides ongoing drama here, interrupted by little set pieces that are more traditionally suspenseful, like Dena's attempts to purchase an ungainly amount of fertilizer from a suspicious dealer, or, later, an espeically well done sequence that sees a too friendly camper interloping on the trio just as they're about to move into the final act of their civil disobedience. This segment is one of the more purely Hitchcockian in the film, for the audience knows more than the innocent bystander, creating quite a bit of suspense. Still, Reichardt never really fully exploits the tension inherent in these situations, and rather strangely lacks subtlety in presenting some of the more screedlike elements in the film (as when the three conspirators drift through a waterlogged "insta-lake" that has decimated the region's fir trees). Ultimately, though, there's a reasonable amount of anxiety built up by the time the three launch their boat toward its explosive destination.

That destination in fact turns out to only be a "rest stop", and it's here that Reichardt probably reveals her intentions most clearly (as evidenced by Reichardt's almost dissociative presentation of what some might consider the climax of the second act). It's the aftermath of the plan that she's most interested in, as frayed relationships and an unexpected tribulation start to create panic, especially on the part of Dena. Unfortunately, Reichardt stretches this aspect of the film into about as lengthy a treatment as the planning and execution of the dam breach, and the film simply can't sustain its forward momentum for that long. While there are well done moments here, including a terrifying if somewhat unmotivated climax that sees one character attacking another, there's a feeling of entropy that starts creeping into Night Moves that undercuts some of the finely attuned observationalism in the first part of the film.

Performances here are generally top notch, though Reichardt is not one to give her characters long speechifyin' sequences, and so all three actors here (most especially Eisenberg) tend to perform with anguished reactionary glances rather than in bursts of dialogue. Night Moves is oddly reminiscent of Edward Abbey's iconic The Monkey Wrench Gang, and in fact it appears that the Abbey estate and a coalition of filmmakers who had optioned the novel sued Night Moves for copyright infringement, though I have been able to discover the disposition of the lawsuit. This book was required reading in Utah, the area I lived in before moving to Oregon, since the eco-terrorists in that book had their sights set on the infamous Glen Canyon Dam, an edifice which created Lake Powell literally overnight. If Reichardt did "appropriate" certain elements of Abbey's novel for her film, she might have wanted to concentrate on the author's structure and especially his use of black humor to get his points across. With people this dour, no matter how noble the cause they're advocating and perhaps especially considering the drastic means to an end they take, it's hard to get worked up when things don't go according to plan for them.

Those of us who live in Oregon or those who watch Portlandia know that the slogan "Keep Portland Weird" has come to define this region. What Night Moves make clear is that weirdos of all stripes are all over this state, and are sometimes up to no good. This film starts out strongly, but then slowly dissipates its momentum, an odd anomaly that undercuts the fact that Reichardt seems to be more interested in the "after party" than the actual event, so to speak. Still, performances are very strong and there's a palpably unsettling mood running throughout this film. Those with Art House sensibilities will probably get more out of this film than the general public. For them if no one else, Night Moves comes Recommended.

[CSW] -1.6- Very slow movie that never builds any suspense or expectation, and a waste of the talent involved. It also has what must be one of the worst movie endings of all time...If you're going to make a movie this dark and slow, you'd better inject some suspense into it, or you're better off just not making anything. Dakota Fanning and Jesse Eisenberg try to match the tone of the movie with very sober and dark performances that almost fall flat and fail to project or elicit any emotion, but they're probably doing their best to stick to the film maker's instructions. I expected something way better, and this was a let down to be sure...Spare yourself and stay away from this train wreck!.
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

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