Soderbergh made three heist films where crime did pay (the Ocean’s trilogy), and then he made one where a family curse implied that it wouldn’t (“Logan Lucky”). In “No Sudden Move,” the wages of capitalism are death, and the best payout one can hope to receive is having their life spared with some pocket change.

Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro, both veterans of Soderbergh’s 2000 Oscar winner “Traffic,” star as crooks caught up in a hostage situation as part of a corporate espionage scheme. They’re in over their heads, serving the whims of other powerful men with money to burn in the center of the U.S. automobile industry.

The use of Detroit as a backdrop deepens the subtext given the decline it has undergone in the decades since 1954, when “No Sudden Move” is set. David Harbour’s philandering family man, the target of the home invasion, happens to be an accountant for General Motors, founded in 1908 and known as the world’s largest carmaker until 2008 when Toyota overtook it and it went bankrupt. Its name is all tied up in the ensuing government bailout and Great Recession, and as characters in “No Sudden Move” use and abuse each other while looking out for their own interests, there’s a sense in which financial gain is short-lived and they’re only double-crossing themselves.

With an Ed Solomon script, “No Sudden Move” is one of those movies where you can watch it and just enjoy it for what it is as a period piece and typically stylish Soderbergh thriller. Look under the mask, though, and there might be more to it than that. Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Brendan Fraser, Kieran Culkin, Noah Jupe, Julia Fox, Bill Duke, the late Ray Liotta, and a certain A-list surprise guest also star.