Moving along in our crime block makes me want to go back first, to get a look at sort of how this all began. After all, I’d wager that most filmmakers owe a lot to those who came before them, and in the case of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), it’s owed quite a bill by many celebrated directors who can draw their stylistic lineage back to Breathless and the French New Wave rebellion against traditional cinema. For better or for worse, we probably wouldn’t have the likes of Martin Scorsese (a quick examination of Mean Streets will show you Breathless fingerprints all over it), Quentin Tarantino, or Jim Jarmusch, even Steven Soderbergh and brilliant Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai have made films that were clearly influenced by Godard. And I think that’s wonderful; it gives film a living history, a DNA that we can trace back to its origins. One of the best ways to know where we are and where we’re going is to know where we’ve come from, right?
Anyway, Breathless (streaming on HBO/Max), other than its pioneering film techniques, like using handheld cameras and low angles to get in and amongst the scenes, or filming in real world locations instead of studio backlots, or frequent jump cuts to add to the frenetic nature of desperation in the characters, is a good movie, but not one that will stick with me for the rest of my life for its narrative. It’s incredible visual storytelling and such an important part of film history, of course. As a story though, to the modern eye, it’s not that special. A two-bit criminal (Jean-Paul Belmondo) makes a rash decision and shoots a cop dead and then tries to hide out in Paris with a girl (Jean Seberg) until he can collect enough money to escape to Italy. The two-bit is a womanizer and what passes for romantic banter in 1960 is borderline horrifying at times; he’s thoroughly unlikable and you will find yourself rooting for his demise almost instantly. Seberg’s character though, is an American in Paris, a pixie cut and a dream away from a career in journalism, and a very charming character. And the film focuses much more on the romantic aspects of their relationship (such that it was) than any crime or anything else. Anyway, it’s in French, so I don’t have extensive notes for you because my French is not nearly good enough for me to watch and take notes without needing the subtitles, malheureusement; je suis désolé. But, if you weren’t feeling super excited about reading 2,000 words on a 65 year old black and white French new wave film, you’re in luck. Because I’ve got a hidden gem for you that’s in English—another COVID film that would be a shame to forget because it’s so damn good.
No Sudden Move (2021, streaming on HBO/Max) boasts a star-studded cast and a resurgent Brendan Fraser—before he was in the Oscar-nominated The Whale, he was in this movie. And starring alongside him are the immense talents of Don Cheadle (Traffic, the MCU), Benicio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects, Sicario), and Kieran Culkin (Succession, A Real Pain), as well as supporting roles from David Harbour (Stranger Things), Amy Seimetz (Family Tree), Frankie Shaw (Mr. Robot), Julia Fox (after Uncut Gems, but before Kanye), Jon Hamm (30 Rock), and Ray Liotta (Narc, Goodfellas) in one of his final roles. It’s lovely see a movie with so many great actors that uses them well and tells a good story, unlike so many star-studded films we have become accustomed to seeing that just feels like them paying off their vacation homes. The talent on display here is staggering and it’s helmed by the aforementioned Steven Soderbergh. See what I mean about knowing where we came from?
We open on Don Cheadle’s character Curtis Goynes being recruited for a job. It’s a simple one, they say. Go “babysit” a family to use as hostages while the husband retrieves an important document from his boss’s office. Curtis is reluctant to do it, not knowing who he’ll be working for, as he has just been released from prison after another job went wrong, causing him to lose $25,000 that he was staked by his boss and now he’s desperate to get some cash and get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Fresh out of prison and persona non grata with some very dangerous people, once his quote is met—$5,000—he has no choice but to agree. He’s paired Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro), an Italian mobster who is desperate, but for different reasons. We meet him when he’s saying goodbye to his mistress, a married woman with a rich husband (whose identity we will learn later in the film). Wanting a payday, he agrees once Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) informs him that they’ll meet his quote—$7,500. Even in crime, the pay disparity is apparent and racial tensions underpin so many interactions in this film. I should, at this point, mention that No Sudden Move is set in Detroit in 1954; so you’re in for some period costumes and a lot of old cars. This is not the Detroit we know now, this was kind of the heyday. The American auto industry over time turned Detroit into a boomtown and the blood of the city was almost inseparable from the gasoline pumping through its engines. Curtis and Ronald don’t know each other by anything but their reputation and they don’t trust each other. Unsurprisingly, Ronald is a bit racist, as was the custom of the time, and Curtis is distrustful of Ronald because he has a reputation for not thinking things through and acting rashly. Now, I’ve never done any real crime before, maybe some light speeding here and there, a touch of reckless driving, and I fully admit to jaywalking on occasion (I’m kind of a rebel), so nothing serious, but my logical brain here thinks that if I’m going to be holding a family hostage very quietly in their upper middle class suburban neighborhood home, that I’d want to work with someone who isn’t likely to pop off and do something stupid at any moment. So though I lack experience in this particular field, I understand Curtis’s hesitation. The distrust is so thick in the air that you can practically breathe it in.
Luckily, tying them all together is Doug Jones’s handpicked man, Charley (Kieran Culkin), who explains the nature of the job to them. Matt Wertz (David Harbour) has access to a code book full of sensitive information that whoever is hiring them wants. Curtis clocks this immediately as a lie, but the conversation doesn’t go much further than that. Charley clearly has the leg up on the information here and is more than happy to keep Curtis and Ronald in the dark. Cut to Matt getting ready for work in the morning when our trio of masked criminals show up and hold Mary Wertz (Amy Seimetz) and her kids at gunpoint while they explain the situation to Matt and less than subtly drop that his affair with his boss’s secretary should get him into the safe. Charley gets in the back of Matt’s Chevrolet and they drive to the office. Once he gets there, Matt tries to retrieve the documents from his boss’s safe, only to find (after a slight kerfuffle with girlfriend/secretary Paula, played by Frankie Shaw) that the safe is empty and his boss took it with him when he went on vacation. He fakes the documents, figuring a few low level goons wouldn’t know what they’re looking at, and Charley delivers them to Doug Jones. But Jones does figure out what they are, and let’s just say, things go from bad to worse for everyone involved. What follows is a twisty ride where deceptions and double crosses fly as fast and as plentifully as bullets in a gunfight, of which there are a few. Loyalties aren’t tested, they aren’t stressed, they aren’t broken; they are simply nonexistent. In this world, there are two states of being—scheming and dead. If you’re not one, you’re the other. In the midst of all this, Curtis and Ronald manage to get their hands on the real documents that are very much not the code book that Charley said it was, but rather something with serious national ramifications regarding Detroit’s biggest industry. And I’m not talking Motown Records here (only partly because at this point, Motown Records hadn’t been founded yet). And as much as cash is king in the hypercapitalist world of crime, it’s nothing compared to money in the corporate world. The lines between crime syndicate and corporation are very blurred here (my how things have…not…changed in 70 years) and that complicates the situation more and more. As Curtis and Ronald peel leaf after leaf to get to the artichoke heart of corruption, violence, and greed, they get in deeper over their heads with every move they make.
This is the second time I’ve seen this movie and it was even more impactful this time around because it was a little easier to follow the twists even though I didn’t remember most of them. But the composition of this movie is so good; it gets the tonal balance just right. There is comedy, there is tension, there is violence, but it works because it’s done incredibly well, by excellent actors, a writer in top form (Ed Solomon, from whom I would not have expected this, because while he wrote Men in Black and Bill and Ted, he also wrote Charlie’s Angels), and a veteran director with lots of good films under his belt—from weightier stuff like Side Effects and Traffic to the lighter fare of the Ocean’s capers or Logan Lucky’s heartfelt heist, it’s clear that Soderbergh knows what he’s doing and makes sure that he doesn’t lose the fun in this serious movie. Because it is heavy in some ways—beyond just the life and death of people and innocents, the larger story here is integral to our lives still and has consequences that we’re still feeling in the real world today (there is a direct through line from this film to The Last Stop in Yuma County, believe it or not, a movie set some 20 years later).
I’m going to take a moment to talk about the visual quirks of this film. My blog is not about cinematography, it’s not purely about the art of directing (frankly, I’m not qualified to talk about either of those things anyway), but sometimes a director does something so out of the norm that I have to mention it. Much like Godard used jump cuts, even mid-sentence, partly to create a sense of disjointedness in Breathless (and partly because of the improvised nature of the script), Soderbergh uses incredibly wide, warped, and vintage lenses here, which give a sense of surreal dreaminess to many of the shots. I thought he was using a fisheye lens at first because of the edge distortion on the screen, but in my research I found it was just old, wide angle lenses that were probably not actually up to snuff for commercial sale. What this does to the viewer is help keep you in the same state of confusion as our protagonists are. We learn as they learn, just about the entire movie is shot from their perspective, we rarely get glimpses of information that they don’t get. We never walk into a room knowing a double cross is imminent because we had a scene with the other party telling us what they’re going to do. The viewer has to sit with the same tension as they do and this fisheye effect helps add to that state of confusion. A really interesting technique that adds to the visual storytelling in the movie, I love the choice Soderbergh made here. There’s a strong minimalist aesthetic through the film that accentuates this choice; normally we’re used to seeing period pieces in very fancy costumes, often Victorian-era fripperies or glamorous wardrobes, but this is very pared down. It’s just so well put together.
Much like Dungeons & Dragons, No Sudden Move is a hidden gem that shouldn’t be because of the unfortunate time it was released. This movie, despite its R rating, should have been huge, it should have sparked conversation, it should have been in Oscar discussions, but instead, I don’t think I know anyone who has even heard of it, let alone seen it. It is smartly written, well acted, well shot, and a strong commentary on the real world and the cost of unchecked greed and what we decide is progress. I didn’t even talk about the Black neighborhood facing displacement due to urban renewal or the hints that Matt’s wife Mary is hiding in the closet and has possibly reciprocated feelings for her neighbor at a time when being gay could get you killed. There’s so much here in this film’s 1 hour 55 minute runtime that it could have felt overstuffed, but everything sticks around for the right length of time and doesn’t ever overstay its welcome. A smart, thoughtful crime film is something relatively rare and should be celebrated. If you have two free hours and a Max subscription, I highly recommend this one.
