Overlooked Movies: Night Moves

"It was a wandering daughter job."

For most of the way, Night Moves is an entertaining private-eye movie.  Gene Hackman is very good as Harry Moseby, who's looking for the wandering daughter (Melanie Griffith) of a former movie actress.  He's also investigating his own wife and discovers that she's having an affair.  Harry's too devoted to his work, it seems, and he's like many  of the private-eyes you read about in books.  He has to follow his investigations to the end.  He wants to know the answers, all of them.  It's an obsession with him.

He finds the wandering daughter in Florida, with her father, but there are other things going on, too.  Harry wants to know about them.  The deeper he delves into the case, the more it appears that everything he thinks he knows is wrong.  He does return the daughter to California, but she's killed in an apparent accident.  Harry goes back to Florida, and . . . I'll be darned if I know.  I've seen this movie twice now, and I still can't figure out the ending.  I'm pretty sure Harry doesn't have everything figured out, either.  I know what happens, and so does Harry, but a lot of it doesn't make any sense, at least to me.  I've never even figured out if Griffith's death is an accident or not.

That doesn't mean this isn't a very good movie.  The acting is topnotch all the way, and the story's a good one right up until the end.  If you have it figured out, let me know.