Review of Suburbicon

In general, I think the Coens are best when they have full auteur-like control over the tone, dialogue, and direction of a movie. They write clever snappy scripts, but they tend to fall flat for me without their direction. I actually enjoyed the main story for awhile, but every beat was so predictable. Also the storyline about the African American Meyer family, whose presence in white 50s suburbia horrifies the neighbors when they are the most normal people in the neighborhood, feels like it should have been its own movie instead of a subplot. Especially knowing that they were based on a real family does them injustice since we didn't get any character development at all, making it hard to care. Oddly, the Meyer family subplot wasn't in the original Coens' script. You can tell there are the makings of an interesting film just beneath the surface, but that is not what made it to the screen.

The Coen Bros. are probably my favorite screenwriters, so this was a must see for me. Being said, this is just a budget Fargo that was all Clooney'd up. This would have been a better movie if it starred Oscar Isaac as a claims investigator trying to figure out what happened to Matt Damon's wife. He could even be crooked. The way we learned information was so boring an un-cinematic.

Clooney has fallen a long way from Good Night and Good Luck. It's a good thing he was already selected for an AFI Life Achievement award before this was released.

I give it 3/10 for great acting which was, alas, to no avail, and good cinematography.