☆ ☆ ☆ ½
No Sudden Move (2021) – S. Soderbergh
There’s no doubt
that director Steven Soderbergh is a master of his craft, alternating between
experimental arthouse works and crowd-pleasing mainstream fare. No Sudden Move
finds him mining the rich neo-noir vein (specifically the mob subgenre),
setting up a plot that sees one twist after another (and also a slow dripfeed
of information to the audience that casts unexpected light on characters’
motivations and relationships). Don Cheadle
plays Curt Goynes, a player currently on the outs with the Detroit gangs (and
freshly out of prison for his involvement in a scheme gone wrong). He and Benicio
del Toro are recruited by mob lackey Brendan Fraser to “babysit” an auto exec’s
family while the exec steals an important document from his boss’s safe. Needless to say, things don’t go to plan but
Goynes seizes every opportunity he can and soon he and del Toro are involved in
a high stakes gamble with big fish too big to care. Echoes of Chinatown (including on the
soundtrack) are unavoidable as seemingly little crimes breakaway to reveal a
larger darker reality. Along the way,
Soderbergh risks losing viewers with these overly complicated machinations and
despite the cool acting, perfect mise-en-scene, and vintage lenses, the film’s ironic
denouement ends things with a whimper rather than the reverberating feeling
that the powerful always win which must have been the aim.
