Saturday, June 7, 2014

Review: Night Moves

109. Night Moves
There are a few moments in "Night Moves" where a palpable sense of tension is created, but they are not enough to recommend the film, which has nothing original to say and, ultimately, nowhere compelling to go.

The film follows a group of three eco-terrorists as they plot to blow up a dam, carry out that plot, and deal with the aftermath. It's nothing that hasn't been seen before. There were a few moments when they carried out the operation that managed to be quite intense, when they were forced to lie low to avoid being seen, even while the bomb was ticking away behind them. A few later scenes also managed to convey a sense of paranoia, utilizing silence effectively. In the end, though, the film followed a predictable pattern, with one member of the group unable to deal with the consequences of what they'd done and events escalating from there. The "escalation" in this case was rather minimal, however, as the film often remained too detached from its characters to create any excitement outside of the isolated moments mentioned earlier.

I typically will give a film a lot of leeway to set things up, as long as that setup eventually pays off. With this film it didn't. The abrupt non-ending is likely meant to be either artistic or meaningful, but is neither. Many other films have explored similar territory and done so much better.

Skip it.

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