Arthur Penn’s 1975 crime thriller, Night Moves, isn’t Gene Hackman’s finest film of the ’70s, but that isn’t any sort of an an insult considering he starred in The Conversation, both French Connection movies and other decade-defining films.

Hackman is Los Angeles private eye Harry Moesby, a former pro football player stuck in a broken marriage and dealing with a mid-life crisis, as he attempts to locate the missing daughter of a former Hollywood glamor girl. The case takes him to Key West where he meets an assortment of eccentric locals while untangling the knotty mystery–and running headlong into his own mortality.

Hackman was the perfect actor for an America crawling out of the Vietnam morass: a tough guy gradually realizing the limits of his virility. He brilliantly depicts Moesby’s internal struggle, right down to the film’s wonderfully open-ended conclusion.•