Soderbergh, Cheadle return to Detroit for ‘No Sudden Move’

During the pandemic, Steven Soderbergh has shot two feature films, released a pair of movies, written a sequel to his first film (1989’s “Sex, Lies and Videotape”), re-edited some of his older movies (mostly for fun) and co-produced the Academy Awards.

It’s an amount of accomplishment that really puts to shame the 1,000-piece puzzle

some of us are still proud of assembling last May.

Yet at a time when much of Hollywood is going through profound change, Soderbergh has, like few others, seized an uncertain moment.

“I think it’s fair to say that I’m the cockroach of this industry,” he said smiling on a recent interview by Zoom. “I can find a way to survive in any version that I’m confronted with.”

“No Sudden Move” opens with Don Cheadle, as Curt Goynes, strolling through 1950s Detroit. Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon conceived of the film from the start as a heist movie with a trio of thieves brought together

not unlike those in Robert Wise’s electric 1959 noir “Odds Against Tomorrow.”

But while working on the script, Solomon came upon the history of the automotive industry’s efforts to avoid emissions controls. “No Sudden Move” begins with three hired guns (Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Kieran Culkin), but in a multiplying series of double-crosses, expands in scope to encapsulate some of Detroit’s original sins, a little like how “Chinatown” does for Los Angeles. The rest of the cast includes Bill Duke, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Julia Fox, Brendan Frazier, Matt Damon and Ray Liotta.

“No Sudden Move,” debuts July 1 on HBO Max.

Claudette Barius / Associated Press Director Steven Soderbergh, second from right, with, from left, actors David Harbour, Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro on the set of “No Sudden Move.”