425: No Sudden Move

[00:00:00] 132. Let's get to No Sudden Move, which is a Max original, of course done by Soderbergh and it's the sixth of seven that I'm doing. It stars Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, David Harbour, John Hamm, Craig Mums Grant, Brendan Fraser, Julia Fox, Karen

[00:00:20] Culkin, Noah Jupe, and a few others. And the synopsis is, a group of criminals are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what's really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.

[00:00:36] So like many of these recent Soderbergh films, they kind of come out of nowhere. I'm pretty much always like, oh cool a new Soderbergh movie, you know, just happened to be released now. And this one I think, considering it also had

[00:00:52] Brendan Fraser who I guess was right in the middle of his Renaissance and this was a return to form for him and bringing back people like Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle and the fact that it was this very traditional noir story

[00:01:07] really brought a lot of people in I think. And it really got a decent amount of praise and it was maybe considered to be a return to form for Soderbergh, I guess, even though he had had success over the last few years before this came

[00:01:19] out. And I just got around to seeing it now. Had been curious. I love noir films. I love classic noir and really everyone involved. And I don't know, it's... Soderbergh has this sort of trend where I like the fact that his movies are so

[00:01:38] unpretentious and very consistent and they're not super high energy or emotional. They're just sort of mellow in a way but there's still a compelling nature to almost all of them and sometimes that works better in some than

[00:01:51] it does in others. And this one, it's tough because I liked it. It would be sort of in the middle of ranking these seven movies. Not one of my favorites. I feel like I wished I had liked it more considering all the things I just

[00:02:05] mentioned. I know some people really really liked it but with how inactive a lot of his movies are and there's not a lot big whoa what the hell moments at least more so these days, it really depends on maybe the story itself, the

[00:02:21] cast members, and I could see you know if you like this one more than Let Them All Talk or vice versa. I think there's an argument for almost all of them as to why you like one more than the other because they're all sort of the same in

[00:02:33] style and tone and structure. But this one I feel like it maybe has to do something with the runtime but there was just a point where I sort of gave up interest in what was going on and I feel like I just wasn't even really following

[00:02:48] that well through the whole thing and also if you hear rain there's it's raining outside right now so apologies if there's any background noise but I liked the original setup, the original crime in the house with the family. I

[00:03:02] thought that was good and coming together of those characters and trying to expose I guess you'd say the corruption in the car business which this is a partially a true story at least the big picture is and so I liked

[00:03:18] all that and that's another Soderbergh trope for sure signature but it is almost two hours and I feel like in those last 40 minutes I was just like really struggling to care about what was going on because I never really did care

[00:03:32] that much. All of his movies are fairly emotionally distant to a certain degree and so I feel like I was just like yeah let's just wrap this up I'm kind of ready for it to be over. I liked the last few minutes with the different endings

[00:03:46] fates of the characters but I don't know it I really went in and out with focus. I liked Matt Damon's little cameo as he often does with Soderbergh I really like that but there's just not that much to really remember about this

[00:04:01] movie not much happens it's not really that violent it's not really that funny it's got some intriguing aspects and it's shot really well I liked the almost like fisheye kind of look to the movie the score is excellent by the guy who

[00:04:16] did Soderbergh's out-of-sight movie back in the late 90s I think so there's a lot of good technical aspects but I was really disengaged from most of what was going on but other than that Benicio del Toro, Don Cheadle, Kieran Culkin like the

[00:04:33] whole cast David Harbour very very good cast I mean he has a great ability to bring a good cast together and I think everybody was very on point I love del Toro like so much I just he's such an underrated actor so if you like

[00:04:47] Noirs I think you could do a lot worse and maybe this is one that will grow on me over time like some of the others have I don't know and if you're someone out there who really really likes it let me know but I think that there's an

[00:04:58] argument why people could be on all spectrums of like star ratings for this movie like oh I hated it it was so boring or I loved it because of this it was like because of that were kind of where I am so I think it's just one of

[00:05:11] those weird movies that could be kind of polarizing for better or for worse so yeah well that one is a three and a half out of five