Review of Suburbicon (2017) by Jonathan D — 25 Aug 2018

Great crime-drama.

It is the late-1950s. Suburbicon is your typical, quiet American town. Then a black family move into the neighbourhood and the bigoted community go out of their way to force them to leave. At roughly the same time, two strangers break into the home of their neighbours, Gardner and Rose Lodge, tie up the family and murder Rose. This leads to a dramatic chain of events.

Great crime-drama, directed by George Clooney and written by Ethan and Joel Coen (with Clooney and Grant Heslov). Has the Coen Brothers' signature style - dark drama mixed with quirky comedy, plus a plot that starts with a simple plan and then snowballs, sucking in not just the guilty but the innocent too. Felt very Fargo-like in the way to cover up one crime another is committed, to the point that rationality and deliberation just goes out of the window.

There's also the Coen features of sudden developments, and solutions to problems, and characters being hoist with their own petard. Very clever, and unexpected, in the way some things are resolved.

Not perfect though. The race angle didn't play any part in the main plot and didn't really have a point. I was expecting it to tie in with the murder story in some way, but it didn't. All it served to do was tell us that 1950s America was filled with racism, racial injustice and racial tension, and we knew this already.

The intro was also unnecessary, and made it feel like the movie was dumbed down for the audience.

Moreover, why didn't the Coen Brothers direct this themselves? George Clooney did a good job but I would like to think the Coen Brothers would have done an even better one.