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Detroit, 1955. A small group of low-level criminals — the sharp-witted Curt (Don Cheadle), the paranoid Ronald (Benicio del Toro), and the chatterbox Charley (Kieran Culkin) — are recruited by a mutual acquaintance for what seems like an easy, profitable job. All they have to do is hold an accountant’s family hostage while he retrieves certain documents from his boss’s office at General Motors. But soon Curt realizes that this supposedly simple job spells nothing good for its perpetrators. Behind it lies a tangled web of conspiracies, schemes, and betrayals that leads all the way to the top, where enormous sums of money are at stake. Hoping to save his own skin — and make a profit in the process — Curt teams up with one of his partners and begins his own cunning game.
No Sudden Move is a witty and intricately structured noir detective story. As is often the case with Soderbergh (Traffic, the Ocean’s trilogy), it sheds light on another aspect of the modern world order. This time, his focus is on large corporations that weave conspiracies to increase profits while often escaping any real accountability for their crimes.
Drawing on a real-life conspiracy among auto manufacturers in the 1950s, Soderbergh compellingly explores the phenomenon known as “Too Big to Jail.” Though the term itself only emerged recently (for those curious about its origins, see Netflix’s documentary Dirty Money, specifically the episode on the cartel bank HSBC), it perfectly describes the situation depicted in the film: in nearly any capitalist country, governments are willing to turn a blind eye to the crimes of major corporations to avoid causing irreparable harm to these giant structures, which create hundreds of thousands of jobs and generate massive tax revenues.
But before viewers are shown the big picture, they — along with the characters — must traverse a long and winding path from the very bottom of the capitalist pyramid, where Cheadle’s, del Toro’s, and Culkin’s characters dwell, to its highest tier. Along the way, we encounter a host of fascinating figures (to be discussed in a later analysis), played by a mix of legendary, forgotten, or currently popular actors: Ray Liotta, Bill Duke, Brendan Fraser, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, and Matt Damon. Most importantly, if you’ve ever watched a film with “hidden depths,” Soderbergh’s latest might just break records for how many layers lie beneath its surface.
Comparisons are inevitable: the first that comes to mind is the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading. Both films feature outstanding performances and are equally steeped in an atmosphere of conspiracy. But while the Coens used their convoluted plot to highlight the absurdity of human existence (culminating in J.K. Simmons’s CIA chief shrugging and admitting they learned nothing from all the deaths), Soderbergh views the world less through the lens of stupidity than of greed. And it is precisely this quality — greed, raised by Soderbergh to an absolute — that drives the tragic and astonishing events of the film. Those at the top of the capitalist pyramid may once again shrug their shoulders, but this time, we’ll understand exactly how the system really works.
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