Category: Jennifer Warren

NIGHT MOVES

By Marc S. Sanders

As soon as composer Michael Small’s easy listening disco themes kick in and you see Gene Hackman make a u-turn in his green Ford Mustang convertible, I had vibes that Night Moves was going to operate like an episode of The Rockford Files.  I was alert and energized.  I liked where this was going.  A new, undiscovered gritty 70s movie to sink my teeth in.

Gene Hackman is Harry Moseby, a perfect name for a private detective.  Arthur Penn is the director in his second of three collaborations with the actor.  The film starts off well for Harry.  He’s giddily promiscuous and happily married to Ellen (Susan Clark), and he’s ready to take on a new case. 

A Hollywood has been actress needs Harry to find and bring back her sixteen year old, runaway daughter named Delly (Melanie Griffith, in her debut role).  Through a lead in the form of a young, punk kid (James Woods, in an early role), Harry flies out to the Florida Keys where Delly might have taken up with her step father.  

Seems easy enough, but before he departs Harry does some personal investigating on the side and discovers that Ellen is having an affair with a guy named Marty (Harris Yulin).  Harry’s carefree exterior is shattered.  Quickly, he becomes bitter towards all he cared about, from his wife and his profession which serves a purpose of lifting the veil on sins and secrets.  

Night Moves performs with unpredictable directions and tempos.  When Harry finds Delly with her step father Tom (John Crawford) and his younger girlfriend Paula (Jennifer Warren), the rundown boat dock where they reside seems relaxing and tranquil.  Paula tends to a dolphin pen.  There’s a plane that Tom uses for shipment trips.  Drugs?  Harry is not all that concerned.  He’s only here to pick up Delly.  A boat is there for fishing and swimming off of too.  Delly feels welcome and independent here.  Though as a teen she’s resistant to Harry’s obligation to return her to her mother in Los Angeles.  

It’s only after he wraps up the case that unexpected twists occur and now he’s got to backtrack to find out what is really going among the ranks of these folks.  In parallel succession, Harry and Ellen have to wade through their own sordid conflicts.  

Watching the Criterion issue of Night Moves was really interesting.  After seeing the film, I watched two different interviews with director Arthur Penn.  There are lots of discoveries to find in the film all the way down the very last frame of the picture.  However, the revelations of the mysteries are not told but rather shown.  Dialogue hardly spells out this story.  It’s what Arthur Penn allows you to see.  He described it as explaining through a lens or view from a window, for example.  As Penn speaks, Criterion edits in quick moments where mirrors and windows that were woven into the final cut of the film provide new information and answers.  It’s a very clever strategy.

The sinister happenings of Night Moves are undetectable until Harry gets wise.  It made me think of what Jake Gittes experiences in Chinatown.  The new assignment seems so easy.  An open and shut case until the complexities surface from under water or even high above.  

What separates Night Moves from the Mickey Spillane gumshoe stories or Chinatown and The Maltese Falcon for example, is that Harry Moseby’s personal hell interferes with an occupation where he’s meant to serve from outside of all of the sordidness.  Harry won’t slack on his case, but he still has to grapple with a sudden broken marriage that he is so capable of uncovering from his wife and her bumbling lover.  He’s not a loner like Sam Spade, Jake Gittes or Mike Hammer.  He’s opted to open his own private practice and dig into others personal conflicts and misgivings.  On the side, he wants a happy home life.  Problem is he is just too damn good at what he does.  So, he’ll get hurt.  It’s the cost of his talents.

This is a great performance from Gene Hackman.  He seems like a put together Jim Rockford in the form of James Garner.  Yet, when the film steers into the tsunami of its conflicts, this character splinters apart.  Hackman has always been good at evoking strength and confidence in the romances and adventures his characters get into as well as with their various occupations.  He’s also a dynamo at showing how his characters crack and become undone (Crimson Tide, The Conversation, The French Connection).  

The supporting cast of lesser known but familiar character actors are collectively stellar as well.  Sharing scenes with Hackman only makes them look more engaging and natural in either their privileged Hollywood, California habitats or the earthy locales of Florida islands.  Arthur Penn assembles this whole cast in great footage and sequences.

Whether it’s a trip to Florida or back to California, a late night personal stake out and break-in at an ocean beach house, a visit to a film set, or a moonlit boating venture in the Keys, Alan Sharp’s script never foreshadows what’s too come.  Thus, Night Moves offers a verity of the sinister and complex.  Just when you think you don’t need to carry much thought with the picture, it suddenly begins to challenge you.

Night Moves will have you believe it gets its title from how Harry plays the strategies of two celebrated chess champions against one another.  He explains to Paula, that while it may seem that the players are three moves ahead of each other, they’re really not.  Instead, there’s play going on beyond a standard trap of check or checkmate.  When everything is laid out to the very last second, it all makes sense even if Harry never had the instinct to think of any likely scenario before.  

Was I a little vague with you just now?  

Good.  

That’s how Night Moves serves its audience best. A stunning, unpredictable thriller.

SLAP SHOT

By Marc S. Sanders

Slap Shot is to hockey what Caddyshack is to golf.  It is rude, crude and unapologetically harsh in its language, its temperament and with the memorable fraternal trio known as the Hanson brothers unforgiving with punches, slugs, checks and body slams.  The wardrobe looks dated (some of the ugliest plaids you have ever seen) and it was produced during a time when hockey players could opt not to wear helmets but it is still outrageously funny.  Best of all, Paul Newman, the guy from more upscale, sophisticated fare like Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, and Hud, leads the cast.  Some of the best actors are also the best comedians.  (Look at Robert DeNiro, Donald Sutherland and Clint Eastwood as well.)

The Charlestown Chiefs are the worst hockey team in the Federal League.  When the local Pennsylvania mill has announced that it is closing, it does not look good for the team as attendance will drop lower than what it already is.  The coach and oldest teammate, Reggie Dunlop (Newman), reaches for a few last-ditch efforts to elevate a demand and an appreciation for the Chiefs. 

First, he turns to reporter pal Dickie Dunn (M Emmet Walsh) and drops a made-up rumor that a Florida retirement community is interested in buying and relocating the team down south.  Then, it dawns upon him to antagonize opposing players which will lead into a series of goon fights.  His three newest recruits, the four eyed Hanson Brothers work best at bloodshed.  The enhanced violence lead to wins and suddenly the Chiefs have a new fan base that follows them on the road and sells out their home games.  Only one player, Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean) is against this new approach.  He’s college educated with a love for the game and refuses to stoop to Reggie’s level. A side story has Ned struggling with his marriage falling apart with his alcoholic wife (Lindsay Crouse).

In the meantime, as the rumor of the buyout stays alive, Reggie does his best to find who exactly owns the team.  He wants to convince that party to keep the organization running. 

Paul Newman owns this film despite a collection of fantastic characters that embody the team.  There’s the French-Canadian goalie who is not sharp at delivering proper English.  Killer Carlson (Jerry Houser) quickly develops a knack for being more of goon than a hockey guard. The team’s manager played by Strother Martin (a regular mainstay co-star in a series of Newman films) has to get the team to catwalk model the latest in fashionwear furs, and there’s Francine (Jennifer Warren).  She’s Reggie’s ex-wife, who still shares a thing with him but will not recommit while he continues to play hockey.

George Roy Hill (The Sting, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid) is the unlikeliest of directors for a foul-mouthed film like this and just knowing that seems to make Slap Shot all the more rebellious and appealing for repeat views.  It’s as if Newman and Hill decided to lift their veil of innocence and join the ranks of the worst obscene.  These guys just said “Aw fuck it.  Let’s make the movie.”  I smile each time a sharp guy like Paul Newman delivers an F bomb.  It’s shocking, but it also works so perfectly.  Hockey is anything but delicate fare.

There are dozens of fight scenes in Slap Shot and normally I might claim exhaustion with its repetitiveness.  Thanks to Hill’s direction, every check or punch or wallop is caught differently.  No one is safe; the fans, the radio announcer, the referees, the organ player, the players.  All of them are in the line of fire of a puck or a punch.  While it should, none of what you see ever looks the same.  So, every contact in this contact sport brings one more laugh after another.  Absolutely hilarious!

The Hanson trio (played by real life hockey players – Jeff and Steve Carlson, David Hanson) became a pop culture sensation in cinema with the release of this film.  The image of these three goons, who look like nerds playing with racing car toys, is as uniquely identifiable as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Terminator get up.  You can never forget the Hanson Brothers.

Screenwriter Nancy Dowd came up with the idea for Slap Shot after listening to her brother’s experiences of being on a minor league team.  Most of the characters she developed were based on actual players that Ned Dowd played with or against. 

I always like when a movie can teach me how an industry works.  With Slap Shot, as slapstick and raggedy as the material proudly is, there’s a mentality to witness and realize.  These guys are literally this brazen, crude and unrepentant, but like Newman’s character Reggie, they’re not stupid or unlikeable either. 

The conclusion of the picture is the championship game. It works because it performs against the grain of what the characters did to get to this point in the story.  The first period break in the locker room is hilarious with Strother Martin going off the rails while Paul Newman is muttering hilariously in the background.   What eventually sends this final game into the stratosphere is unexpected and hilarious. 

Slap Shot triumphs because it was never careful in its comedy.  It’s obscene, prejudiced by today’s standards and yet I do not believe most audience demographics would be offended because there’s an understanding in what it means to be a goon on a hockey team. 

Slap Shot may be a movie of its time from nearly fifty years ago, but it still holds up with big laughs and hilarious set ups. If I need to be more formal in my praise, it’s one hysterical fucking movie with a great fucking script.

Now cue the National Anthem because I’M LISTENING TO THE FUCKING SONG!!!!!