Ellen runs a successful furniture store and likes to watch French New Wave movies with her friends. Harry is an ex pro-football star whose primary intellectual interest is chess. Harry and Ellen’s problem is that they seem to have grown apart. He tails his own wife like one of his subjects, which interferes a bit in his work on his current case: tracking down runaway teenager Delilah (Melanie Griffith) for her movie-star mother. Hoping to surprise her downtown, he instead sees her walking home from watching an art film with her lover. His own marriage to Ellen (Susan Clark) isn’t fairing much better. His work lacks the romance of Sam Spade - mostly divorce cases out of Los Angeles. Harry (Gene Hackman) is a private detective. Thinking about it, the queen sacrifice, and the three knight moves. But over the last few weeks I just keep coming back to this movie. When it was over I went “huh, OK” and moved on to the next thing. It suckered me in with a noir promise but was giving me romantic drama instead. I’m a sucker for private-eye stories from just about any era, but I felt Night Moves was using the genre as sheep’s clothing. To be honest, while i was watching this movie I kept wondering if it was worth the effort. “You beating yourself?” asks Paula when she sees Harry studying his chess board, and it’s so deadpan I didn’t even catch the the double entendre until I started writing this. If you want to figure it out, you’re on your own. It does, but Sharp will not let you in on it. “This means something,” I said, fighting down the urge to make a volcano out of mashed potatoes. Quiet, but clear enough to make alert movie-watchers sit up and take notice. This is the understated but extraordinary screenwriting of Scottish author Alan Sharp in action. “Matter of fact, I do regret it,” Harry says. Must have regretted it every day of his life. Queen sacrifice,” he says, nudging pieces around the travel chess set next to his bourbon bottle. ![]() Private investigator Harry explains a chess game from 1922 that he’s been studying. ![]() There’s a quiet scene in the middle of Night Moves that stands out like an emergency flare.
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