It stars Gene Hackman as an ex-professional football player turned Los Angeles private investigator who uncovers a series of sinister events while searching for the missing teenage daughter of a former movie actress.

The cast also features Susan Clark, Edward Binns, Jennifer Warren, James Woods and Melanie Griffith in her film debut.

He incidentally learns through his friend Nick (Kenneth Mars) that a fortune can be made in Mexican artifacts, as the country is cracking down on the theft of its Native American legacy.

He accidentally finds out his wife Ellen is having a love affair with a man named Marty Heller (Harris Yulin).

Aging former actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her sixteen-year-old daughter Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith).

Quentin tells Harry that he last saw Delly at a New Mexico film location, where she started flirting with one of Arlene's old flames, stuntman Marv Ellman (Anthony Costello).

Later Harry listens to an answering-machine message from Delly apparently offering a tip, but he turns it off mid-message to focus on patching up his marriage.

Harry and Ellen attempt to work towards reconciliation but he returns to Florida, where he finds Quentin's dead body floating in Tom's dolphin pen.

Paula admits she did not report the dead body in the plane because the aircraft contained a valuable art treasure they were smuggling piecemeal from the Yucatan to the United States.

While Paula is diving, a floatplane arrives and the pilot strafes the boat with a submachine gun, injuring Harry in the leg.

Night Moves was shot in the fall of 1973, but due to Melanie Griffith being just sixteen years of age at the time her underwater nude scenes were filmed, the movie was not released until 1975.

[12] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars and called it "one of the best psychological thrillers in a long time, probably since Don't Look Now.

[14] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that he had "mixed feelings" about the film, elaborating that the characters "seem to deserve better than the quality of the narrative given them.

"[17] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "a stunning, stylish detective mystery in the classic Raymond Chandler-Ross Macdonald mold," as well as "a fast, often funny movie with lots of compassionately observed real, living, breathing people.

This handsome Warners presentation is still another triumph for ever-busy, ever-versatile Gene Hackman, director Arthur Penn and writer Alan Sharp.

"[18] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, stating, "The fatal weakness is Alan Sharp's screenplay, a pointlessly murky, ambiguous variation on conventional private-eye themes ... we're supposed to be so impressed by the dolorous, world-weary tone that we overlook some pretty awesome loopholes and absurdities in the story itself, which never generates much mystery, suspense or credible human interest.

[20] Stephen Prince has written, "Penn directed a group of key pictures in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Alice's Restaurant (1969), Little Big Man (1970), Night Moves [1975]) that captured the verve of the counterculture, its subsequent collapse, and the ensuing despair of the post-Watergate era.

"[25] In 2010, Manohla Dargis described it as "the great, despairing Night Moves (1975), with Gene Hackman as a private detective who ends up circling the abyss, a no‑exit comment on the post-1968, post-Watergate times.

Gone are the Philip Marlowes and tough-guy private investigators who have tremendous insight into crime and can triumph over criminals because they carry within them a code of honor.