Good fellas: Steven Soderbergh assembles star cast for No Sudden Move
Some of Hollywood’s biggest heavyweights have come together to make Steven Soderbergh’s latest crime thriller.
Thankfully, after acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement from filmmaking in 2013, he decided to return, with two star-studded crime comedies, 2017’s Logan Lucky and 2019’s The Laundromat, as well as the 2019 sport drama High Flying Bird.
Now with the crime thriller No Sudden Move, the prolific filmmaker – who received the Cannes Palme d’Or for 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, an Oscar for 2000’s Traffic, a nomination for 2000’s Erin Brockovich and two Emmys for the 2013 Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra – delivers one of his best films ever.
He has again amassed a stellar cast headed by his frequent collaborators Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle and as well as David Harbour and Ray Liotta and a pair of feisty female actors, Julia Fox and Frankie Shaw, whose characters give the men a run for their money.
Del Toro, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for Traffic and the best actor prize in Cannes for Soderbergh’s 2008 drama Che, admits he owes a lot to the director.
“Those are the two pivotal movies in my career and I don’t know if I would be here without Steven Soderbergh on those movies,” Del Toro says over Zoom, seated alongside Cheadle.
“So when Steven called me up for No Sudden Move, he told me a little bit about the character, a little bit about the movie and how Don was starring in the film. I said yes immediately. I hadn’t read the script and I read it over the following days and it was great, but there are some people that you just say yes to, no matter what. Steven’s approach hasn’t changed. We talked about the story, we talked about the characters, and as actors we tried to get involved.”
In the film, written by Ed Solomon, Del Toro and Cheadle play a pair of lowlifes, Ronald Russo and Curt Goynes, who are trying to figure out what is going on in their current illicit job. Together with Kieran Culkin’s Charley, they have been hired to hold a family hostage while forcing its patriarch, David Harbour’s Matt Wertz, to steal a top-secret document from his workplace at an automobile manufacturer in Detroit in the mid-1950s. The document contains information that could change the automobile industry forever and the company guards it with full force.
Del Toro may have made his name playing men on the other side of the law, as he did in his breakthrough role as the mumbling Fenster in 1995’s The Usual Suspects and as an ex-con struggling to go straight in 2003’s 21 Grams alongside Naomi Watts (for which both were Oscar-nominated), but as the son of lawyers he has a strong social consciousness and is a spokesperson for environmental concerns in his native Puerto Rico. Environmental concerns figure in Soderbergh’s new film too, as they did in Erin Brockovich. The economic disenfranchising of African-Americans is another subject writ large.
“The cherry on the cake was the social commentary in the script,” notes Del Toro of details that should come as a surprise. “It adds another layer to this type of film noir. It shows you how maybe things have changed, but not enough. We still need to think about and work on issues that are out there and need to be fixed.”
Cheadle adds: “If you go to Detroit right now, you still see the communities that are depicted in this film struggling to recover from what happened only a generation ago. We’re not that far removed from the effects of what happened with the automobile industry there and what happened with these so-called ‘ghetto loans’,” he says, referring to subprime loans issued particularly to African-Americans. “So it’s a commentary not only on Detroit, but I think on the United States, and probably many different countries writ large, where the disenfranchised are trying to find ways to push back against corporations and people in power who get to wield the big stick.”
Certainly, you have to be quick on your toes to follow all the twists in the film, which bears the trademarks of Soderbergh’s clever crime thrillers 1998’s Out of Sight and 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven.
As one reviewer puts it, the “witty, provocative movie asserts that the rich get away with murder while most of the rest of us get caught holding the bag”. The film’s ending is a cracker, with the surprise appearance of an uncredited Soderbergh regular. Guess who? (Hint: he starred in Contagion, Soderbergh’s pandemic-related 2011 film that has unsurprisingly found a new audience.)
No Sudden Move was shot under strong restrictions during the early stages of Covid-19. As Cheadle notes, the rehearsal process was swift. “Benicio and I were texting each other and talking on the phone. We were talking to Steven, saying, Hey, ‘What about this? What about that?’ We might walk through a scene once or twice and then we were shooting. Steven created a bubble for us to work in and we were able to finish the movie, against all odds.”
He recalls how the incredibly efficient Soderbergh, who also worked as cinematographer and editor, wrapped the film 10 days early. “Each night we’d go to the bar, which was in the bubble, so we’d be drinking and hanging out while Steven was upstairs cutting. When he’d finished he’d ask if anybody wanted to see the movie. It was wild to have somebody who was so on top of it. Ultimately, the balance – his ability to give everybody the moments they’re supposed to have where no one actor was out of proportion with anybody else – was a gift. Although I’m pretty sure I stood out,” he adds with a chuckle.
In most reviews, the standout honour, however, has gone to Del Toro, with one critic praising his rascally energy. When I ask if he is a rascal in real life, he agrees – with Cheadle chiming, “No doubt he’s a rascal”.
“I think Ronald Russo is a selfish rascal,” says Del Toro of his character. “There are some rascals that you would want to hang around with, but you wouldn’t want to hang around with him.”
He’s a bit naive, isn’t he? “No, I think he’s playing possum. I think he puts on the naivete while he pickpockets you.”
But he gets done in, in the end. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t see that coming, did he?” he laughs.
Liotta, whose most famous role was in Martin Scorsese’s seminal mafia movie Goodfellas, plays mob boss Frank Capeilli. How is this movie different?
“Well I didn’t whack anybody,” Liotta quips. “But you know I’ve really only played three gangsters. I’ve played a lot of dirty cops. Even in Goodfellas I wasn’t in the mafia – I just was working with those people.”
He calls No Sudden Move “a crime caper with a lot of double crosses. It’s fun doing that but I’m not a violent person. I’ve never been in a fight.”
Still, he looks back fondly on Goodfellas. “If you’re in a movie that lasts well past the due date, that’s great. It doesn’t happen a lot. I still have kids coming up to me. I was lucky enough to have that movie and Field of Dreams, but I’ve done other things.
“I even did a couple of Muppet movies,” he chuckles, “so I think I got past the Goodfellas thing.
“I just waited almost too long to not do something like Goodfellas.”
Harbour, recently seen in Black Widow, is best known for his role as Jim Hopper in the Netflix series Stranger Things. At the end of the third season, Hopper seemed to die but it was not the case. Still the gregarious actor had to stay mum. In No Sudden Move we shouldn’t know too much about his character’s fate either.
“It’s a little easier in the sense that Matt Wertz is a blank slate to the audience when we meet him,” Harbour says.
“It’s not a character who’s been so deeply established like Hopper, who’s so beloved by millions of people, who are hounding you and yelling at you online saying, ‘We’re suing Netflix because you died’. So that was hard. I didn’t like that at all. That was weirder than this.”
He enjoyed creating a character who is so duplicitous. “The fun thing is you see the journey of this regular guy who ultimately is confronted by these dark forces to do certain things, but also finds it somewhat liberating. I mean, he gets to punch people, he gets to let out this thing that might be him.”
Harbour also found it refreshing that the typical noir characters have been updated. “There are some stronger women and there’s more emphasis on exploring racism and other current issues. But it’s still that sexy throwback thriller, which Soderbergh does extremely well and that I love.”
While he enjoys appearing in Stranger Things and likewise commends the show for its strong female characters, Harbour embraced the opportunity to appear in what he calls “true cinema” and wants to do more.
“I’m always looking for things to stretch me and things that confront the issues that I’m dealing with. I’m in my mid-40s and while I get to play guys like Hopper, I’m also thinking about confronting ageing and what it means. I now have a wife and stepkids,” he says of his recent marriage to Lily Allen, “so I’m confronting a lot of these mature issues. For years I’ve been an overgrown boy.”
Might he come to Australia to make a film?
“Yes,” he replies with great enthusiasm. “They did want me to replace Chris Hemsworth in Thor; he wasn’t in shape enough or something. But I was like, ‘Guys, you’ve got to let him try again.’ So I turned that down.”
Give the man a comedy please!
Of course Del Toro is also coming in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which might also be termed true cinema. How does working with Anderson compare to Soderbergh?
“They’re different, they’re different worlds,” Del Toro responds. “Wes is more theatrical. His film has three different stories and they never come together. Steven uses his instincts and decisions are made on the set. Things will happen that he will capture, like he will move the camera, he’ll see you doing something and then he’ll cover action that was never scripted. Wes knows exactly what every character is going to do. So they have two different styles and both are very good filmmakers at what they do. I’m lucky to be able to work with these two guys who are at the top of their game.”
No Sudden Move releases via PVOD (Premium Video on Demand) on September 23. It will be available on participating digital platforms for rent or purchase (Apple TV, Fetch, Foxtel Store, Google Play, Microsoft, Prime Video, Telstra TV Box Office and YouTube).
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