What is masked is trustworthiness exposed. "No Sudden Move" is an old school masquerade yet its energy is postmodern shenanigans that's relentlessly enjoyable as it is conniving. Vicious humor and concealed brutality choreographed tightly that any movement is tethered to the ambient impulse. While there is inertia in the sparse athleticism of camera strokes, the force that pulls the suspense is that so little gasp, strides in stills steaming with excitement along the cool anxiety.
Straightaway, and in contradiction to its namesake, “No Sudden Move” begins after the Warner Bros. opener. Seen is Curt (Don Cheadle), walking along the suburbia on what could be a Monday pre-sunrise (Matt Wertz, depicted by everyman David Harbour, comments “It’s only Tuesday,” perhaps a day after, near the film’s final minutes.) The main guy of the movie is followed with fish-eye lensing reminiscent of “The Favourite” (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018). Throughout, the bowl-like prism is mechanized by director Steven Soderbergh, effecting a shifting distance — projecting the surround into a sphere — but glues the center line on the subject ergo the characters. The jagged sides and blur amid the center deconstruct sureness around a whorl of doubt. Are they inching towards trusting or is the uncertainty nearer than could be seen? At the end of the opening montage, Curt comes in a bar, and that is when the typeface ‘Detroit 1954’ sparks on-screen. The sequence emphasizes that the film is a race; walk on because arriving and stopping at a destination may be the start of anyone’s sudden and permanent cessation.
So what’s the story in this morning glory? Curt is recruited by mobster Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) who also hires Russo — the stone-faced, shivery Benecio Del Toro — and Charley portrayed by Kieran Culkin. The lattermost is somewhat disappointingly blown in a shortened exposure that’s almost a cameo. But Charley’s abrupt departure kindles the dynamic of Curt and Russo to frenemies. Betrayal is shadowing everyone and anyone that its loom is as dispersed as street lamps in the corners of the neighborhood. Jones wants the trio to enforce accountant Wertz into stealing a document from a safe owned by his boss Mel Forbert (Hugh Maguire). Is that an adequate premise? Simple at the surface, but when the document is acquired through dizzying yet satisfying home invasions, gunpoints, and commentated punching, Soderbergh unloads the palimpsest that is “No Sudden Move.” Then delves Curt into the depths of organized crime in the city, discovering he and Russo are the hunted all along, whilst they are tangled with Wertz and the mob bosses. With the strings knotted from wee storylines of race, morality, and indulgence to the main plot, Soderbergh puppets this crime thriller into its surest variant — an irrestible, nail-biting caper.
“No Sudden Move” has doom for vignette with its magic deployed by the cinematography of Soderbergh (credited as Peter Andrews). The frames are lighted ashen blue for frigid sombreness and a chilling effect that any tick or strike of impulse would be met with hopeless luck. While cool on the exteriors, the lighting indoors is a crispy fawn. The hot yellow is like a dangling lamp in an interrogation and the audience is the interrogator — making them lean on to wince for a hint in this maze. Wide angles galore, to demonstrate the vast imbalance on which teeters galvanic nervousness. The noir element is often alchemized by the gloomy humor with the timing of a pistol’s click, contrary to the screeching velocity that fuelled the giggles in Soderbergh’s 2017 heist flick “Logan Lucky.” The paced compunction is finely locomotive through Soderbergh’s very stringent editing (he is Mary Ann Bernard in the credits; these rubrics are allusions to the film’s suspiciousness).
Is trust the villain here? Actually, the race is about figuring if anyone even is anyone. Mask or no mask, trustworthiness relies on sheer instinct — if they die, then trust was misplaced; if they live, it’s because they believed they will. And believable are the performances of the ensemble cast including the perturbingly underrated Jon Hamm. Here he has a small part (again!) as Detective Joe Finney. There must be an unwritten rule on cop roles for relatively major actors: if it is not a cop movie, do not be the cop. Even Bill Duke has managed to bag a slightly more prominent character in yet another mob boss Aldrick Watkins. Duke is fearsome due to his eyes masked by those black-tinted oversized glasses, and his lips when spewing lines are constantly in a quarter-yawn. Fraser hasn’t been this awesomely nasty since he was a mash-up of the Ricks from “The Mummy” (1999, 2001, 2008) and “Crash” (2004), which he is in “No Sudden Move.” He’s a crime kingpin now — equating campy, menace, and despondence whilst wielding a gun towards Russo and Curt whom Cheadle struts with a no-care-for-no-one veneer. The actor is sure when Curt is in doubt, that inner sturdiness encrusting the fragility yet arctic pith of the character. Curt ain’t gullible; being an ex-con, he has street cred and a wealth of experience in organized crime, so he has a price on his head, wanted and alive. Russo has not much of a backstory except implied that he was employed in General Motors then suggestively was embezzled or did the embezzling himself. The murkiness of Russo’s past is etched in the microscopic pores of Del Toro’s also wintery visage. There’s that lingering commotion within that silences the unease around his being which Del Toro carries suspiciously subliminal. It’s what he doesn’t show that inflicts fear amid the curious and unintentional funny that Russo sometimes is. Ray Liotta as additional mobster Frank Capelli (whose wife is Vanessa or Veronica — Julia Fox unrecognizeable as a suburban mistress to Russo) simplifies Russo’s nature, “You see, Ron, the problem is you’re not smart enough to know how not smart you are. Which makes you unpredictable. Which makes you untrustworthy.” Untrustworthy, yes, but smart is something dependent on whether he is correct about somebody. Liotta’s mythical mob presence is authenticity to any crime movie. If he’s humurous, it’s because the laughter is in defense of his imposing sinister.
The script, by Ed Solomon, is akin to a pigeon’s chirp — subtle and minimal to inflict dreariness against the concealed and untold. Subtlety is elaborate in “No Sudden Move” that the choreography is of tiniest breadth, especially during the early invasion sequences at Wertz’s and Forbert’s houses; the dinner setup between Curt, Capelli, Russo, and Jones; and the deceptive turnover at Hotel Gotham. The tightness of movements deprives the explosiveness into a fuming thrill — not a feint is allowed or the claustrophobic, grim anticipation would be quelled within the coordination’s disarray. Organized crime must be that, an assemblage of messes in quietus. But to outrun this race means not to be ahead; who loses first sees it to the end. Those who are caught behind gets the privilege to witness how their luck serves them. It does not matter the pace, just maintain against stillness. Stopping lets doom catch up, and overtaking it would usurp fate. Keep at the race, the prize is along the lane.
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Images and trailer ©️ Warner Bros., HBO Max; YouTube.com
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