George Clooney directed the Coen Brothers’ script for Suburbicon, and you better believe it’s the story of an ordinary man swept up in a wacky situation out of his control.
Matt Damon stars as a man named Gardner, who lives in a “perfect” town. As with all perfect towns featuring an almost entirely white cast, there’s a seedy underbelly. Gardner is somehow involved with the mob, if you can even believe such a nice, normal dude might disregard his family’s safety like that. As a result, his wife gets murdered in their kitchen. Thankfully, that also means there’s only one featured woman in the cast, Julianne Moore as Aunt Margaret.
Usually, a wife getting killed is motivation enough for any red-blooded man to fight back, but on top of that, the mob messes with his doe-eyed progeny. Gardner kills a mobster, then eats a sandwich. A hero is born. Damon’s character starts taking out the filth with escalating violence, and the pleasant Suburbicon stops being quite so perfect. Oh no.
Entertainment Weekly reports Damon is all in on Clooney as a director:
“I’ll do anything with him,” he said. “I think we’ve done seven movies together now, and he’s just a great director. I love all the movies that he’s directed, and it just makes it a really easy choice when he calls.”
Easy, breezy, beautiful cinema.