![]() ( Here’s a good primer.) The film feels like a magic trick, given how it’s resolutely a crime caper, but also a tour of the forces at play that turned Detroit from the booming city it was to the struggling city it is. While satisfying and rich on its own, No Sudden Move’s knotty plot demands viewers’ close attention, and a bit of contextual knowledge about its 1950s Detroit setting goes a long way toward fully clarifying its scope. No Sudden Move layers in the backstabbing and betrayal with a real sense of danger and comedy, but what really makes it linger is the ways each turn of the plot skirts a different part of the city it’s set in, expanding not only the narrative, but the scope of the crime being committed, and the definition of who the real criminals are. As with any story about criminals, a big part of the fun is what happens when a room full of people who categorically cannot trust each other are forced to, even though they (and the audience) know full well that someone is likely to be a double-crosser. What is surprising is where the rabbit hole leads. Together, the trio plan to hold Matt’s family hostage while Charley takes Matt to get the document. Joining him in the task are Ronald Russo (Benicio del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin). He’s hired by Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) working on behalf of someone else, to get a document from a man named Matt Wertz ( Stranger Things’ David Harbour). While there are a lot of characters to keep track of, No Sudden Move mostly keeps its focus tight on Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle), a small-time crook in 1955 Detroit with a big secret that’s left him with few friends in the world. It’s all the more dazzling that it does all this while being slickly entertaining and assured. It starts as a crime caper, makes a pit stop among the sitdowns and power-jockeying of gangster films, and somehow manages to tie its many disparate threads together in a period drama about the destruction of an American city. Soderbergh, the wildly prolific filmmaking polymath who also shot and edited the film (which was written by Ed Solomon of Bill & Ted and Men in Black fame), turns No Sudden Move into a dizzying number of things. And all of it gestures at the true cause of the violence: not the greed of petty thieves, but the rot at the heart of the project called America. Before long, everything spirals out of control as one crew’s score splinters into multiple schemes and wickedly sharp cinematic chaos. After three hours of this, the job will be done, and they can leave the family unharmed, and get paid. They’re told to put on masks and “babysit” a family by breaking into their home and holding them hostage at gunpoint. ![]() A small team of criminals are hired with the promise of an easy payday. Steven Soderbergh’s HBO Max film No Sudden Move starts like all heist movies: with what’s supposed to be a simple job. ![]()
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