Night Moves

Screenwriter Alan Sharp's dialogue, as edgy as his name, combines with Penn's incisive direction to create memorable characters played by Hackman, Ward, Jennifer Warren and a young James Woods as an auto mechanic you don't want messing with your points and plugs. [22 July 2005, p.6E]

Night Moves is one of the best psychological thrillers in a long time.

Filled with shadows both literal and figurative, Night Moves elegantly combines the hard-edged pessimism, crackling banter, and all-consuming darkness of classic noir with the paranoia and bitterness that characterizes so much '70s cinema.

A stunning, stylish detective mystery in the classic Raymond Chandler/Ross Macdonald mold. [02 Sep 1990, p.72]

One of Penn's best features; his direction of actors is sensitive and purposeful throughout.

Night Moves is a paradox: a suspenseless suspenser, very well cast with players who lend sustained interest to largely synthetic theatrical characters.

An elegant conundrum, a private‐eye film that has its full share of duplicity, violence and bizarre revelation, but whose mind keeps straying from questions of pure narrative to those of the hero's psyche.