Directed by Arthur Penn • 1975 • United States
Starring Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Edward Binns

Arthur Penn’s haunting neonoir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’s missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he can hardly grasp. Bolstered by Alan Sharp’s genre-scrambling script and Dede Allen’s elliptical editing, the daringly labyrinthine NIGHT MOVES is a defining work of post-Watergate cinema—a silent scream of existential dread and moral decay whose legend has only grown with time.