No Sudden Move (2021)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
A group of criminals are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what's really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.
9 connections found
View:
9 films that influenced No Sudden Move
What critics say influenced No Sudden Move
And when the nervous, bumbling Matt, who’s reminiscent of William H. Macy in “Fargo,” gets to his office, he discovers that the document isn’t there.
A home-invasion scene where Russo drapes a blanket over a woman’s head evokes the Coen brothers’ sarcastic Fargo rather than the moody, penetrating look at middle-class American tragedy in the Coens’ best film, The Man Who Wasn’t There .
He comes from the same mold as William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo (1996), caught up in a crime and barely managing to keep afloat.
His latest film is the HBO Max original No Sudden Move , a crime movie that falls somewhere between his own Out of Sight and the Coen Brothers’ Fargo .
Owing a debt to nostalgia-dipped movies like "Devil in a Blue Dress" and the Coen brothers (the film stylistically resembling the most recent season of "Fargo"), the action unfolds in 1954 Detroit, where Cheadle's Curt Goynes and Del Toro's Ronald Russo are thrown together to handle what should be a pretty basic job: holding a family hostage long enough to compel the patriarch (David Harbour) to hand over some precious documents.
This film hits a sweet spot for me, reminiscent of such supreme ’50s-era crime dramas as Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow.
He authenticates America’s inherent corruption — white and black criminals canceling each other out — negating the moral valor of De Palma’s The Untouchables or The Asphalt Jungle or The Killing , movies Soderbergh probably thinks he’s smarter than.
Still, it’s more accurate to place it in the tradition of the 1950s crime movies that were, in retrospect, the embryonic versions of his snazzy heist films — classics like “The Asphalt Jungle” and “The Killing.”
The film explores a sort-of buddy noir comedy in a similar vein to The Nice Guys between their characters.
Suffice it to say that No Sudden Move , with its extra-textual concerns and out-of-their-league protagonists, plays like a 1950s spin on Shane Black’s The Nice Guys , a shaggy dog noir where losing is probably the only option.
Watching this film reminded me of the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep .
Advertisement
As for the family taken hostage, David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) is fittingly sleazy as the father, Noah Jupe (“A Quiet Place”) stands his ground as the brave son, and Amy Seimetz (“Upstream Color”) rises above the role of terrified housewife to save the film from ditzy girlfriends and floozy secretaries that proved the Achilles heel of “The Irishman” (2019).
That’s not to say he knows the access code or has credentials to be there, but he is sleeping with his co-worker (Frankie Shaw) behind the backs of his loving wife Mary’s (Amy Seimetz) and their children (played by A Quiet Place breakout performer Noah Jupe and Lucy Holt).
In a dizzying kitchen showdown, the masked assailants force Mary and her children (including Noah Jupe, who has a knack after “A Quiet Place” and its sequal for defiant pre-teens in danger) to stay home at gunpoint while Matt goes to his office to infiltrate a safe.
But thanks to Steven Soderbergh’s light touch with a heist caper, that’s the mood of No Sudden Move (premiering on HBO Max on Thursday), a modestly scaled neo-noir that combines the packed ensemble cast and shaggy-dog plotting of Soderbergh films like The Limey or Logan Lucky with the embedded social critique of The Informant! or The Girlfriend Experience .
The take has tended to be that No Sudden Move (now streaming on HBO Max) is a return to familiar territory for Soderbergh, which is to say, satisfying territory: a crime caper with an all-star, hyper-charismatic cast à la the Oceans films, the more recent Logan Lucky, the verified classic Out of Sight.
As luck would have it, the Steven Soderbergh who shows up for No Sudden Move is perhaps my favorite Soderbergh: the cockeyed, Coenesque director of offbeat crime comedies last seen in 2017’s deeply underappreciated Logan Lucky.
Director Steven Soderbergh is a master of the modern crime caper from Ocean’s Eleven to Logan Lucky .
Steven Soderbergh has always shown an affinity for heist stories—think not only of the “Ocean’s” pictures but of “The Underneath,” “Out of Sight” and “Logan Lucky”—and an aptitude for bringing them off cunningly.
Even his more light-hearted efforts (“Ocean’s 11,” “Logan Lucky”) are smarter than you expect, while his best films are multi-layered narratives (“Traffic,” “The Laundromat”) that challenge the viewer to follow a complex story that slowly reveals itself with one subtle revelation after another.
No Sudden Move was written by Ed Solomon, whose career spans from cult fare like Showtime’s It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, to the pop hallmark Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, to popcorn trash like the Men in Black and Charlie’s Angels franchises, to — most relevantly — Soderbergh’s 12-hour, experimental murder mystery Mosaic, which was part series, part interactive choose-you-own-adventure, threaded into coherence by a formidable Sharon Stone.
The film, written by Men in Black and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure writer Ed Solomon, feels quite a lot like a Coen Brothers movie, especially with amateur criminals getting in way over their heads, and even repeated instances of the “man behind the desk” trope.
The screenplay by Ed Solomon ( Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , Now You See Me ) is superbly written.
Set in 1950s Detroit (and filmed on location in the city), “No Sudden Move” might have your head spinning at times as the plot weaves this way and that, incorporating small-time criminals and a big-time corporate cover-up and not always subtle commentary on the racial politics of the time into the story, but director Soderbergh and the veteran scribe Ed Solomon (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Men in Black”) do a remarkable job of tying the loose ends together in a plausible and satisfying manner.
Like 2019’s Knives Out, No Sudden Move is the sort of clever, grown-up fun that rarely gets made anymore.
Advertisement
Not only does Damon turn his back on Ford v Ferrari , the last interesting movie he has made, but his appearance is a reminder of Soderbergh and his movie-star friends celebrating American crime in that dispiriting Ocean’s Eleven franchise.