![]() Perhaps we’ve seen del Toro play too many enigmatic mafiosi for his character to seem entirely fresh, but Cheadle does his best work in years as this other little guy, fuming to be used as fodder and craftily turning the tables. Curt is the first to cotton onto a set-up, during a kitchen stand-off with an unanswered phone shredding everyone’s nerves. As reluctant partners, Curt and Ronald get off to a rocky start which settles, at best, into a wary groove. Soderbergh buys time to keep layering in characterisation, shot by shot. Seimetz and the reliable Jupe could hardly play these scenes better than they do, as nervy victims of an escalating mess, while Culkin drives Harbour to his office to improvise a sweating, one-man heist any which way he can.ĭavid Holmes’s twanging score is like urban Morricone: it keeps the clock mournfully ticking. The plot, from Ed Solomon’s Elmore Leonard-ish screenplay, unfolds with suave ease, but it’s the way Soderbergh aces the details, such as the skull-like cloth masks the trio wear during this home invasion, that elevates it in style terms. Thanks to the duplicitous presence of a third guy, Charley (a never more out-for-himself Kieran Culkin), they find themselves in the thick of a suburban hostage situation with Harbour’s wife (Amy Seimetz) and son (Noah Jupe), with the fingers of all involved closer to pressing triggers than was ever part of the plan. These two think they’re being used to pressurise a mid-ranking auto-industry executive (David Harbour) into stealing a blueprint from his workplace, but the extortion planned off the back of that is well beyond their pay grade. Along with a fellow called Ronald (Benicio del Toro), whom he has yet to meet, he accepts a job, which is naturally a lot more complex than it sounds, from a hulking heavy (Brendan Fraser, diabolically shady in Sydney Greenstreet mode). In a dark fedora and leather jacket, Don Cheadle begins shuffling down Motor City’s back streets, playing a small-time criminal called Curt Goynes who’s scrabbling to pay the rent. Perhaps the director felt the need to challenge himself with the quirk of visual novelty, but it’s a needless distraction – especially given how sturdily written and played the film turns out to be. To signal a period look, Soderbergh and his cinematographer attached wide-angle lenses to modern cameras, producing a strange, bug-eyed distortion effect around the edges of the frame. His latest, No Sudden Move, is a moody crime drama set in 1954 Detroit, with one pronounced eccentricity of style. But there’s a relaxed pleasure in his dabbling across genres these days – a sense of making low-to-mid budget films for the heck of it, rather than because a burning need compels him back. None are quite what you’d call premium Soderbergh a couple were damp squibs. Likely story: his run of six films since then would be the envy of many a director. Steven Soderbergh claimed he was retiring from cinema in 2013.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |