![]() Meanwhile, we never know quite how to feel about his partner, Russo, who fills the role of the bumbling idiot. He is absolutely captivating to watch and impossible not to root for. And yet, despite this, Cheadle’s incredible charisma shines through. As far as I can tell, we never learn why he was in prison or why a mob wants him dead. The closest Soderbergh gives us is a quick pitstop with a possible ex-lover and the mention of some land that was taken from him as the motivation for his unlawful ventures. But he’s given very little personal story. He stops a family from being killed, but in exchange, he forces the father of the family (David Harbour) to assault an older man to get closer to the mysterious document. On paper, Goynes is only vaguely likable. Instead, we are kept in constant apprehension, waiting for one to turn on the other. The two of them end up being double-crossed time and time again, yet they never develop the buddy-buddy bond that the genre expects. He’s hired by a mysterious man along with another criminal, Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro), to steal a document. The man? Don Cheadle.Ĭheadle, who plays Detroit gangster Curtis Goynes, is easily the best part of “No Sudden Move.” Goynes, recently out of prison, with a bounty on his head of thousands of dollars offered by two different Detroit mafia bosses, is looking for a new job. We return to the man, following now behind his confident gait and bowler hat, every frame dripping in typified exposition. ![]() Shots of black and white photographs take over the screen for a few seconds, presenting the faces of people who will never again make an appearance, just to make absolutely certain we know that the movie is set in the past. We see a man in dark clothes walking towards us in the distance through a vignette border. The opening credits are in bold red block letters with a yellow border and a drop shadow effect: mid-century vintage. The music is jazzy and suspenseful, a slow melody with an anxious beat underneath. ![]() We are kept so much in the dark in nonstop anticipation over the twists and turns of double-crossing mobsters that each development barely registers an emotional reaction.Īs soon as the film begins, we know we are watching a period crime drama. But this preoccupation with suspense is ultimately the movie’s downfall. ![]() Soderbergh leaves out more than he tells, feeding us just enough information at a time to keep us in hungry suspense. The film is shot with a wide-angle lens, the background of Detroit rolling off the edges of the screen distorted and discarded. Steven Soderbergh’s most recent crime thriller, “No Sudden Move,” proceeds just like the name would suggest: slowly. ![]()
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