"No Sudden Move" Is a Plea to the Camera Operator

When I heard that director Steven Soderbergh was releasing a new movie, it didn't take many details to convince me that I had to see it. No Sudden Move was a return to the "heist" genre that he helmed in Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, and Logan Lucky. It starred Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro, no strangers themselves to a heist movie. And, some critics were whispering, it might just be Soderbergh's best heist movie (or at least up there with them). That's all I needed to know!

Except... that's not all I needed to know. Because had I done much more digging at all, I likely would have reached the conclusion that No Sudden Move was not for me. The numerous flaws I found in the movie really aren't hidden; there's no shortage of articles on the internet calling out basically every one of the things I found off-putting about the movie.

No Sudden Move does start off quite strong. In its first half hour, we're introduced to a tight little group of interestingly drawn characters. They have fun, big personalities that seem like they're going to be interesting in a tense situation. And a tense situation is exactly what we get, as the movie throws us directly into the caper before we fully understand even what the caper exactly is. It's compelling, and the work you have to do to catch up feels rewarding.

But then the movie continues to open up more and more and more. Each new half hour introduces seemingly just as many characters, until the cast has quadrupled by the end. Every new batch is less well-drawn than the one before, for lack of screen time available to devote to them amid a story already well underway. Motivations don't make sense, and soon neither does the plot. It all devolves into an incomprehensible snarl of double-crossing and greed that feels like a heist movie without actually evincing any of the joy or smarts that for me are hallmarks of the genre.

Worst of all: you can't even really see any of it. For reasons I simply cannot comprehend, Soderbergh chose to film this entire movie with fisheye lenses. Actors on the edges of his super widescreen frame become skinny and stretched. Even the slightest pan or zoom of the camera induces mild vertigo as the visuals lurch awkwardly. It's as if, having previously gotten a little press for filming a movie entirely on an iPhone, Soderbergh decided to make this one on a doorbell security camera. Did he conceive it so that projection on a large curved screen would stretch it back to normal? (If so, he had to know better; this was filmed in fall 2020, squarely in the pandemic.) I was just pulled into the movie enough in the opening act to tolerate the visuals, but had I known it was all going to be downhill from there, I never would have put in the extreme mental effort to "ignore what I was seeing," trying to get over some imagined hump.

There are some good performances amid the stacked cast. David Harbour plays rather against type in a fun way, timid and cornered. Jon Hamm exudes his signature charm/smarm. Brendan Fraser is unrecognizable at first in a role that's fun for how serious it is. Kieran Culkin surprisingly gives what I think is the strongest performance in the film. And all that's not even getting into the appearances by Bill Duke, Ray Liotta, a fun unbilled cameo... and yes, pretty good anchor performances by Cheadle and del Toro (though, arguably, they're outshone by the ensemble).

Still, I don't think the cast makes it worthwhile to wrestle with the belabored plot. And again, it must be stressed: you can't see much of it: anything that takes place on the left third or right third of the screen, out in fisheye territory. All told, I'd give No Sudden Move a D+. Sometimes, my instinct to avoid learning more about a film that "could be interesting" pays off with pleasant surprises. This is one of the times where a little digging would have saved me two hours.