Inside Moves (1980)

It’s happened to me more times than I’d like to count: I remember with fondness some movie I saw in high school or college, then revisit it years later only to cringe with embarrassment at how bad it is. Such movies were probably just as bad when I initially saw them; I just didn’t have enough life experience at the time to know it.

Inside Moves was released in 1980, my senior year in high school. I probably saw it on HBO a year or two later, finding nothing else on TV on some cold, rainy afternoon. I do remember being sucked in by the film’s opening: a man walks into a building with a confident swagger, checking out a few attractive women on the way to an elevator which takes him to the building’s 10th floor. He enters an empty room, opens a window, perches himself on the ledge and jumps to the street below.

That scene is still effective nearly 30 years later, but I feared the remainder of the film would descend the slippery slope of sentimentality. The man who jumped, Roary (John Savage), survives the fall, but is left with a sideways crab-like walk. We still don’t know at this point why he jumped when he walks into Max’s Bar, a place where other disabled people seem to converge on a daily basis. Roary becomes slowly immersed into this world of crippled characters and the guy who runs the bar, Jerry (David Morse), a good basketball player who could be great, if only he could get his leg operated on.



Sounds like a cliche-ridden beginning, doesn’t it? But director Richard Donner (Superman, the Lethal Weapon series) handles the story with remarkable restraint. A couple of scenes feel forced and a bit heavy-handed, but the overall tenor of the film is quiet and reserved. This is a film full of broken people and how brokenness can be a conduit for grace, mercy and friendship.

Part of the film's restraint comes from strong performances from Savage and Diana Scarwid, a barmaid at Max’s. Scarwid (who earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for this film) sort of faded into obscurity after the disastrous Mommie Dearest (1981) and has since worked mostly in TV roles. Savage, who appeared in several big pictures early in his career (The Deer Hunter, The Onion Field, Hair), has gravitated to mostly lower-profile movies, yet he works like a demon. (He’s working in 16 movies in 2009 alone!)

Inside Moves is not a great film, but it’s a very good one, one that did not disappoint me nearly 30 years after my initial viewing. And anytime a 30-year-old memory gets validated, that's something to celebrate. Inside Moves is also worthy of celebration.