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 certainly deserves it. “Wendy & Lucy,” “Certain Women” and “Showing Up” demonstrate the tenderness of a filmmaker who makes films about ordinary people in freefall, without the luxury of safety nets. Reichardt’s characteristic minimalism makes his work difficult to recommend to casual audiences, as his films are often accused of being “slow and boring”, which I couldn’t disagree with more. There is an honesty to his work that exists in the prolonged silences, naturalistic lighting and serene landscapes. Together, they illustrate how small but seismic his characters are overall. Take for example his 2025 film “The Mastermind,” which eschews any notion of what one typically expects from a film about an art thief (played here by Josh O’Connor). His films don’t adhere to the structural conventions that mainstream moviegoers are accustomed to, and that’s what makes them so fascinating.

Today, 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 as much attention as the rest of his work, but deserves just as much praise. The film follows three radical environmentalists seeking to blow up a hydroelectric dam in Oregon, who all come to the mission from different perspectives. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) is a die-hard activist who is most resolute in keeping everything airtight. Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), meanwhile, is a former Marine who shares an affinity for the more destructive nature of his job. And then there’s Dena (Dakota Fanning, a standout as always), a wealthy New England transplant who wants to be part of the change. Preparing and eventually implementing their plan comes with its own set of unintended consequences.

The plot of “Night Moves” shares similarities with the excellent 2023 thriller “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” but it approaches the subject from a very different angle. Like Reichardt, the tension behind the bombings lies not so much in what is happening as in how it happens. Josh, Dena and Harmon are all discouraged by corporate encroachment on their community and feel this would be the best way to make a statement. But each step reveals gaps in their plan that they hadn’t accounted for, like a passerby seeing them all sitting together at a picnic table or, in one particularly tense sequence, a fertilizer salesman who insists that Dena show her Social Security card. Reichardt, along with screenwriter Jon Raymond, litters “Night Moves” with a pervasive sense of doubt that always looms over these characters’ decisions and the ideology behind them. Whether they succeed or not is not the question.

Part of the reason I revere Reichardt is that 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 evoke. “Night Moves” is meditative in nature, allowing entire scenes to unfold in a way where you don’t realize how immersed you are in their plot until you’ve spent enough time simply. session with them. It’s a masterclass in understated tension that conveys lots of silence and body language. Fanning and Sarsgaard are fantastic, but it’s Eisenberg who delivers the most complex performance.

The lack of clear-cut catharsis in Reichardt’s crime thriller is made up for by its memorable ending – an ending that underscores the crushing weight that comes with reaching the point of no return.