Movie ReviewsJosh Reviews No Sudden Move

Josh Reviews No Sudden Move

The great director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, No Sudden Move, was recently released on HBO Max.  The film stars Don Cheadle as Curt Goynes, a man just released from prison.  Needing cash, he takes a job along with another criminal named Ronald Russo (Benicio del Toro).  They each take an immediate dislike to the other but are forced to rely on one another when the job goes wrong and they find themselves on the run from a mess of other criminals, both of the gangster type and the rich white collar type.

This film has a hell of a cast.  It’s great fun seeing Don Cheadle back in a leading role.  Mr. Cheadle (who previously appeared in Mr. Soderbergh’s Oceans 11 films, as well as Out of Sight and Traffic) is great as Curt.  He plays Curt as tough and brave but flawed; this is a classic noir protagonist for whom we’re not sure things are actually going to work out.  I love the oil and water pairing of Mr. Cheadle and Benicio del Toro, and some of the best parts of the film are when the two get to bounce off of one another.  Ronald Russo is another in Mr. del Toro’s collection of scummy but still lovable characters.  David Harbour (Stranger Things, Hellboy, Black Widow) is fantastic as Matt Wertz, the poor sap who has access to the documents that the criminals want/need.  I haven’t seen Brendan Fraser (The Mummy films, The Quiet American) on screen in years; it’s fun to see him here as Doug Jones, the criminal fixer who connects Curt and Ronald for the job.  Jon Hamm brings his perfect Jon Hamm square jaw and charisma to the part of Joe Finney, the detective assigned to investigate the events that go wrong at Matt Wertz’s house.  Ray Liotta and Bill Duke are both terrific as dueling crime bosses.  Matt Damon pops up late in the film for a critical scene as a wealthy businessman who is just as much a criminal as the street-level hoods we’ve been following for much of the film.  Amy Seimetz has a small but important role as Matt’s wife Mary Wertz.  Julia Fox (Uncut Gems) is great as Vanessa, the wife of Ray Liotta’s crime boss Frank Capelli.  Kieran Culkin is great as an unhinged criminal, Charley.  What a cast that is!!

I liked No Sudden Move, though I didn’t quite love the film the way I’d expected to based on Mr. Soderbergh’s being at the helm and the incredible cast he assembled.  Frankly, the film’s sort of generic title (which doesn’t really mean anything, nor does it seem to me to connect to the story being told) is emblematic of the film’s flaws.  It’s a little generic, a little less gripping or memorable than I’d hoped.

I like the period piece elements of the film, which is set in Chicago in the 1950’s.  This clearly is a film made on a limited budget, so it’s not a film that lingers on huge set pieces that show off the period elements in a showy way.  But the film doesn’t need that; it’s more subtly period, and I enjoyed that.

There are a lot of layered ideas in the film, which was scripted by Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure; Men in Black; Now You See Me).  I like the way the film juxtaposes white collar and blue collar criminal elements.  I like the way the macguffin of the film is connected to the Big Three automakers and the way they apparently used both legal and illegal means to ensure their dominance.  (There’s great history for this sort of approach to film noir — Chinatown’s connection to Los Angeles real estate and water wars being one of the most famous examples.)

Ultimately though, I found the film a little overly complicated and hard to follow, and I felt the film kept most of the characters at somewhat of a distance from me as an audience member.  I wanted to get to know these characters better, and therefore invest more deeply in their stories.  This is a fun caper film, but it didn’t sink its hooks into me in the way a truly great film would.

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