‘No Sudden Move’ a noir full of crafty characters
Two smalltime crooks discover they are pawns in a vast corporate conspiracy, and soon they hatch a plan to crown themselves kings in Steven Soderbergh’s fedorawearing oldschool noir “No Sudden Move.”
That’s an apt title for the film, which premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, July 1. Deliberate and downbeat, this Soderbergh outing with Don Cheadle and Matt Damon isn’t the flashy, breezy fun of their “Oceans” movies. Instead, it’s a dark film filled with characters who all want their cut in one way or another and are willing to do desperate things to get it. You might even call it gritty, if it weren’t for the gleaming chrome of all the shiny new cars, an elusive symbol of the American dream in the 1950s.
Set in 1954 Detroit, the film begins with a gangster putting together a small team to pull off a job. His name is not Danny Ocean, but a mysterious figure named Jones (a rotund Brendan Fraser, looking more like Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil” than the guy who starred in those “Mummy” flicks). He hires two lowrent hoods, Curt Goynes (Cheadle) and Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro), for a simple “babysitting job.”
The job: Team with Jones’ guy, Charley (Kieran Culkin), to invade the home of the Wertz family and take them hostage. Charley is to take the patriarch of the family, auto executive Matt (David Harbour, who also stars in Marvel’s new “Black Widow” film), to his office and steal the topsecret formula of a way to curb auto emissions. To motivate Matt, the babysitters, Curt and Ronald, stay behind with Matt’s wife, Mary (Amy Seimetz) and their children (Noah Jupe, Lucy Holt).
When the formula, supposedly in the safe of Matt’s boss Mel (Hugh Maguire)
isn’t there — and neither is Mel — Charley takes Matt back home. Charley’s directive, as Curt suddenly realizes, is to kill everyone in the house, Curt and Ronald included. Before he can do it, Curt kills Charley first.
Thinking fast, Curt and Ronald take Matt hostage themselves, leaving in Matt’s car to track down that formula.
Where is the formula? Who wants it? How much is it worth? Who is Jones working for? By going rogue, Curt and Ronald unleash a chain of events involving a local gangster (Ray Liotta), the gangster’s wife ( Julia Fox), the cop in charge of solving Charley’s murder ( Jon Hamm), Mel’s secretary (Frankie Shaw), Curt’s former crime boss (Bill Duke) and a shady, powerful auto executive (Damon, in a small role).
Even as everyone’s plans unravel, the film does not. The script, by Ed Solomon, is sharp, as is Soderbergh’s direction.
The shapeshifting Soderbergh, whose last film, also for HBO Max, was the Meryl Streep-Dianne WiestCandice Bergen gabfest “Let Them All Talk,” switches genres like most people change clothes. And yet he returns time and time again to the theme of corporate malfeasance, and how corrupt power invisibly shapes the live of ordinary people.
No matter how smart Curt and Ronald are, they’ll never beat the Man. The best they can hope for is a small victory, if even that.