Inside Moves
Widescreen Edition
Directed by Richard Donner
Starring John Savage, David Morse, Diana Scarwid, Amy Wright
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: February 3, 2009

Richard Donner has never been known as a director of quiet and subtle dramas. Even though the former actor got his start as a director in television during the 1960’s, Donner’s feature directorial career has consisted of big studio blockbusters like The Omen, Superman, and the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Between Superman and his Richard Pryor/Jackie Gleason comedy The Toy , Donner decided to make his new film an adaptation of Todd Walton‘s novel Inside Moves. Coming from a director primarily known for large-scale cinematic adventures exploding with emotional excesses, stylistic flourishes, and innovative visual effects, the intimate, character-driven drama would be a drastic change of pace for the veteran filmmaker. The finished film was released in late 1980 to critical raves and non-existent audiences so it had to reach movie buffs the hard way, through cable and video exposure. Now the movie has finally been released on DVD from the Lionsgate and although an intervention was necessary to make sure the DVD contained a remastered widescreen picture and not a low-rent full frame transfer, this wonderfully eccentric drama has finally earned its chance to reach the widest possible audience, an opportunity that bad timing and a mediocre marketing strategy deprived Inside Moves of the first time.