No Sudden Move is Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh’s second film for HBO Max after the Meryl Streep starrer Let Them All Talk, and it found him in familiar territory. This is his latest heist film, and he knows a thing or two about the heist genre thanks to his work on Out of Sight, the Ocean’s Eleven Trilogy, and Logan Lucky.
With his latest, No Sudden Move, he reaffirmed that he is a master at crafting an engaging heist film. While his previous entries in the genre had many comedic elements, this one was a gritty and darker take.
The film is a crime drama, with elements of a home invasion thriller set in Detroit during 1955. It follows a group of criminals brought together under mysterious circumstances who must work together to uncover what’s going on when their simple job goes entirely sideways.
In a typical Soderbergh crime film manner, he does a great job at building the suspense and keeping you guessing as we figure out things simultaneously as the characters, which I love. In addition, he reaffirmed that he is a master at crafting an engaging heist film, as he fills the movie with a plethora of unexpected twists and turns. The film has elements of heist, mobster crime stories and balances them very well.
While it’s not very violent, the moments of violence we do get were done very well and offered a lot of shock value. In addition, I found the production design excellent; it felt like we were transported back to the ’50s. My favorite aspects were the attire and cars.
The script was written by Ed Solomon, best known for writing the Bill and Ted trilogy and the first Men in Black, and I have to say I was very impressed by the amount of social commentary he put in his script in regards to Don Cheadle’s character as he deals with life in a pre-Civil Rights setting. I wasn’t expecting that, and I very much appreciated it. While I had my issues with the script, which I’ll mention soon, it did have some great dialogue in there that was strong.
Like most of Soderbergh’s films, this has a stacked cast, one of the best I’ve seen all year. It is led by two of his best collaborators in Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro and Oscar nominee Don Cheadle, who have great chemistry together. For Del Toro, this is his third time working with Soderbergh after Traffic (for which he won his Oscar) and Che (his best performance), and they keep their winning streak alive with this one. Del Toro does a great job playing the slowish dim-witted criminal. For me, Cheadle comes away with the film, playing the most interesting character with the best arc. The social commentary added a lot to his character and his performance.
Other standouts from the stacked cast are Julia Fox, who I’ve loved since Uncut Gems. She doesn’t get too many scenes, but every single one of her scenes was very memorable to me and very important. They had an exciting aspect that moved the story along. While I knew he was in it beforehand, it wouldn’t be a Soderbergh film without a Matt Damon appearance, and I liked his scene quite a lot. I’ll go as far as saying that it’s the best scene in the whole film. David Harbour is very subdued in a vital role, but he also gets one of the funniest lines/scenes in the entire movie.
It was great seeing Brendan Fraser in a film for the first time in what feels like forever as he has mainly done TV lately. His character is very mysterious, which I liked because it allowed Fraser to do something different, but I also wish he would have been more developed. Amy Seimetz plays the mother of the family who gets held hostage at the beginning of the film, and she was excellent. She does a great job at displaying the fear most of us would have in the situation. Lastly, being a huge fan of Oz, it was great seeing Craig “muMs” Grant, who passed away earlier this year, make an appearance. His character is connected to Cheadle, and it’s an essential character in getting things running.
For all the good in it, No Sudden Move has its fair share of issues. Knowing Soderbergh and his practical ways, the look of the film was deliberate, but it wasn’t a good choice. I wouldn’t say I liked that he chose to use a fish-eye lens. It made the film look amateurish at times. This isn’t telling the movie was boring as I was heavily invested for most of the 115 minutes run time, but the pacing was off. The film takes a while to get going, but the second half makes up for it. I would have trimmed some scenes or removed them completely, mainly from that first half, to get things going faster.
While I did like the film quite a lot, I won’t say the screenplay was excellent. The story got very convoluted at times, with a little too much going all at once and many characters being introduced. As a result, the story was simply serviceable but not as good as Soderbergh’s previous heist films. Another aspect I wasn’t a big fan of was the conclusion of the film.
Overall, No Sudden Move is the best out of the four streaming films that Soderbergh has coming out. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max, so it’s straightforward to watch in the comfort of your home.
