No Sudden Move (2021)

     Detroit 54’ - A black criminal, Goynes (played Don Cheadle), is hired to serve in a home invasion heist with two other criminals. When Goynes realizes things aren’t as initially described; Goynes takes matters into his owns hands, hoping to get ahead of the main ringmaster who hired him in the first place. 

 

 

As every year (since 2017), Steven Soderbergh is back with a new movie, a new Cohen Brothers movie to be exact, with his swirling yet simple crime masterpiece that is - No Sudden Move (2021). Soderbergh creates a smooth and precise crime ensemble drama, set in front of the back drop of the thriving and the soon-to-be dwindling Detroit car industry, before its full collapse. The film is part noir, part mob film about the urge to put blame on the immediate characters of a bad situation, rather than putting continual focus on the powers that be, that create bad situations from the outset; ie - The government, the cops and the wealthy. Goynes maybe a murderous criminal, but at the end of the day he’s a black man in 1954 Detroit trying to survive, and the black mob may have power but they’re under the thumb of the Detroit PD, and Italian mob maybe have connections in the Detroit PD but they’re playing in the sand box of the white owned capitalism and auto industry, who happen to be immigrants themselves and who are ultimately under the thumb of the US government. Soderbergh paints a web of sobering reality that slowly dismantles every character’s assumption of each other, and our hopes for our unexpected heroes to succeed. Normal action movie standards would go into satisfying results, but those are subverted here for the sake of realism. No Sudden Move reminds us that even in the world of mob movies there’s always a bigger fish, and that bigger fish is no mystery. It’s the same fish that we all have to wrestle with and play taxes to (or avoid playing taxes to) and its reach knows no bounds: Money. 

 

 

Don Cheadle as Goynes, does some of his best work as the grizzled and haggard criminal, just released from prison and known for a botched job. Don Cheadle plays the sort of rolling soul of Detroit, and everyone else is the gentrifying, abandoning reason for Detroit’s demise; With the resting cast of Benicio Del Toro as the racist Russo, Brenden Fraser as the mysterious Jones, Ray Liotta as Frank Capelli, Julia Fox as Vanessa Capelli, Kieran Culkin as the focused Charley and David Harbour as the victim Matt Wertz. 

 

 

Soderbergh has done some straight forward dramas recently about business moguls, but it’s always perfect to see him tackle the realm of murder and business. With 70’s patience and focus of straight to the point yet informative scenes, and daringly goofy scenarios featuring slow witted but endearing characters looking for any chance to proof themselves. All the while, having a dark cloud create above them like impeding doom, enclosing on their every decision in the form of a killer, the law or destitution.

 

No Sudden Move has the violence, the thrills, the suspense, the cleverness, the insight and the truths without the unnecessary reward. And like Soderbergh’s other movies, his underdog at the centre of the story, either wins…… or survives. 10/10.

 

 

-          Maurice Jones