Night Moves (DVD)

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Harry gets more disillusioned as the story goes on, and I have to admit that by the time it was over, I was pretty disillusioned by the movie. In the first half Harry leisurely ambles along from his own personal crisis to the case he's on, back and forth, and it all seems rather aimless. Then, when the case appears closed, the excitement really begins. So, you have to wait for it. Yet when the closing credits roll, you have to wonder anew if any of it was worth your time.

At age forty, Harry is a decent guy who's just beginning to question his own existence, the meaning of his life, and the sheer extent of evil in the world. My question is "Yeah, well, so what?"

Video:
The video quality is about what you would expect from a thirty-year-old movie on DVD these days. Originally presented on screen at a 1.85:1 ratio, it's transferred to disc in an anamorphic ratio that pretty much fills up a 16x9 television. Its major weakness is grain. Location shots are more than a bit grainy, as are most darker indoor scenes, giving the overall picture a slightly rough appearance. Definition can vary from excellent to ordinary, depending on the lighting in a shot, the camera angle, or the distance from the subject. And colors show up in fairly realistic contrasts except, again, when the picture gets too dark.

Audio:
The audio is even more ordinary than the video. The soundtrack has been mastered for playback in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, with some apparent cleaning up along the way. Nonetheless, there's not much that can be done about the fact that the dynamics and frequency range are limited and the midrange somewhat hard. This does lend it a certain degree of detail to the sonic image but at the expense of not being particularly natural.

Extras:
"Night Moves" was never very popular in theaters, so it's understandable that Warner Bros. would not go too far out of their way to spend any more money than they had to on extras. Basically, what we get is an eight-minute vintage featurette, "The Day of the Director," made during the film's shooting and mostly promotional. It does little to shed any new light on the movie, its characters, or its themes. In addition, there are twenty-seven scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
There was a lot of potential in "Night Moves," but looked at today it shows its too obvious seventies' cynical, trust-no-one bent. When the story sticks to character and action, it succeeds. When it strays off into philosophical and psychological rambling, leaving vital plot threads hanging, it loses interest. But there's always Hackman, who is as watchable as ever, and for him alone and a maybe certain raw and realistic brutality, the movie continues to pass a fascinating ninety-odd minutes

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