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Parents' Guide to

No Sudden Move

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Engaging heist movie has strong language, violence.

Movie R 2022 115 minutes
No Sudden Move Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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age 15+

Based on 1 parent review

doctora
doctora Parent of 6-year-old
July 16, 2022
age 15+

Unique and engaging story from beginning to end

This film is a hold your breath caper with a lot of twists and turns. The film invites you in and then pulls the rug from under you in the first 30 minutes and then does not let you go. Great performances from great actors and a unique story. Soderbergh interweaves storytelling, historical context and strong dialogue with sharp shots and great costumes. The energy is tense and the performers have taken a deep dive into their characters and we are only too happy to swim alongside them.
See all 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In NO SUDDEN MOVE, an automotive executive has a secret report describing plans for a car part that can limit car pollution. The executive is hiding it from his bosses and trying to sell it to bigger car companies eager to bury the report because in the 1950s, those corporations hadn't yet admitted that burning gasoline causes air pollution. Curtis Goynes (Don Cheadle), fresh out of prison, and the dim-witted bad guy Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro) are hired to baby-sit the family of Matt Wertz (David Harbour), a car company accountant, while Charley (Kieran Culkin) drives Matt to steal the document out of his boss' safe. Matt is planning to leave his wife for his boss' secretary, Paula (Frankie Shaw), complicating the plot. After someone dies by gunshot, Curtis realizes he can make far more money peddling the document higher on the food chain. Multiple double crosses ensue, the police play a corrupt role, and a racist, anti-Semitic White automotive executive demonstrates that he and others like him are calling the shots in American society, without regard for the law. At the heart of this heist story is a series of other crimes more far-reaching than holding a suburban Detroit family hostage. The movie suggests that evacuating inner cities of minority populations to make way for highways and office parks, red-lining, gentrification, and other racism-based programs implemented across the country were and continue to be part of boosting an American economy that depended at least partly on the widespread use of cars and trucks.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (1 ):
Kids say (2 ):

No Sudden Move is an extremely likable caper movie that nods to many iconic films of the past. The plot's nearly incomprehensible twists and turns mimic Beat the Devil and The Big Sleep, films with famously hard-to-follow narratives. The hostage set-up echoes 1940s and '50s tension-fests Suddenly, The Desperate Hours, and Key Largo. The message of corporate corruption at the expense of a naïve public echoes the cynicism of Network, Steven Soderbergh's own Erin Brockovich (about water pollution), and Chinatown, about how wealthy parties took control of access to water in dry Southern California. Soderbergh is a student of film as much as he's a gifted filmmaker and storyteller, so his nod to past films is no surprise, nor is the film's studied noir-ish feel, as these characters seem to move through a brown cast to the air around them.

Performances are solid and reassuring, and it doesn't seem coincidental that some of the smartest characters here are women -- played by Frankie Shaw, Julia Fox, and Amy Seimetz as Matt's weary wife. The film feels most old-fashioned and unnecessarily talky when it allows an elite executive played by Matt Damon to deliver an absurdly chatty philosophical tangent that manages to offend and insult most minorities. That brings the movie around to reverse-Frank Capra territory, where we are cynically lectured, as in Network, that none of us little guys can effectively fight the powerful executives who really run things.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the way a family taken hostage deals with their ordeal. What does the pressure reveal about the relationships in the family?

  • How do you think your family would react if you were put in that position?

  • What does the movie say about the way that car companies have conducted themselves with regard to causing air pollution?

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