This Underseen 2010s Crime Thriller Streaming On Prime Video Deserves Your Attention

Kelly Reichardt hardly comes up in conversations about the greatest directors working today, but she definitely deserves to. "Wendy & Lucy," "Certain Women," and "Showing Up" demonstrate the tenderness of a filmmaker who makes movies about ordinary people in a state of freefall without the luxury of safety nets. Reichardt's signature minimalism makes her work difficult to recommend to casual audiences, as her films are often accused of being "slow and boring," something I couldn't disagree with more. There's an honesty to her work that exists in protracted silences, naturalistic lighting, and serene landscapes. Together, they illustrate just how small yet seismic her characters are in the bigger picture. Take her 2025 film "The Mastermind," for example, which eschews all notions of what you would typically expect from a movie about an art thief (played here by Josh O'Connor). Her films don't adhere to the structural conventions that mainstream cinemagoers are used to, and that's what makes them so riveting.

Now, one of Reichardt's most accessible films, 2013's "Night Moves," is streaming on Prime Video. It's an incredible slow burn thriller that doesn't get nearly as much attention as the rest of her oeuvre, yet deserves just as much praise. The film follows three radical environmentalists seeking to blow up a hydroelectric dam in Oregon, all of whom come at the mission from different perspectives. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) is an entrenched activist who's the most steadfast about making sure everything is airtight. Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), meanwhile, is a former Marine who shares an affinity for the job's more destructive nature. And then there's Dena (Dakota Fanning, a standout as always), a wealthy New England transplant who wants to be part of the change. The lead-up and eventual carrying out of their plan comes with its own set of unforeseen consequences.

The plot of "Night Moves" shares similarities with the excellent 2023 thriller "How to Blow Up a Pipeline," but it approaches the material through a much different lens. In Reichardt fashion, the tension behind the bombing lies not so much in what's happening but how it's happening. Josh, Dena, and Harmon are all disheartened with corporate establishments encroaching on their community and feel this would be the best way to make a statement. But every step reveals gaps in their plan that they didn't account for, like a bystander seeing them all sit together at a picnic table or, in an exceptionally tense sequence, a fertilizer salesman who insists on Dena showing her Social Security card. Reichardt, along with screenwriter Jon Raymond, litters "Night Moves" with a pervading sense of doubt that always looms over these characters' decisions and the ideology behind them. Whether they succeed or not is besides the point.

Part of why I revere Reichardt is because she has no interest in directly telling you what you should think. She presents her characters as they are, warts and all, and makes the audience sit with the uncomfortable feelings they bring up. "Night Moves" is meditative by nature, allowing entire scenes to play out in a manner where you don't realize how immersed you are in their plot until you've spent enough time simply sitting with them. It's a masterclass in understated tension that conveys a great deal with silence and body language. Fanning and Sarsgaard are fantastic, but it's Eisenberg who gives the most layered performance.

The absence of any clear-cut catharsis in Reichardt's criminally underseen thriller is matched by its memorable ending — one that emphasizes the crushing weight that comes with the point of no return.