Checked out the new Tom Hanks / Emma Watson paranoia drama The Circle. I don’t think it’s getting a lot of reviews and attention… and I’m not sure it really deserves it. But it’d be nice for a couple Hollywood stars at different ends of their careers to get a bit more of a push from the media and advertisers…
This film is about Emma Watson as a new employee at The Circle, a behemoth of a tech company which is what would happen if Google, Facebook, Apple, and Initech all had a baby together. They are a monolithic company involved in both social media and spy cameras with a Steve Jobs like boss at the top, played by Tom Hanks.
Watson’s character gets sucked into the ethos of the company and starts to promote their concepts and philosophies. Ideas like Privacy is a Lie and that it’s wrong to deny someone an experience if you can stream it to them. The movie wants to be a paranoia thriller about a mega company stealing your individuality and freedom and it IS about that. But it’s about that in a kind of abstract way… nobody appears evil and our protagonist seems to go along with them kind of blindly. It’s kind of nice that the answers aren’t easy – the same tech that steals your privacy can protect children from predators.
It’s an important message but its told kind of poorly. For the most part, the only people who will get anything original out of the message would be teenagers. But some of the technology and use of the tech feels like something a grumpy old adult would have written.
There’s a good cast here but it’s fully Emma Watson’s movie. Tom Hanks is in four or five scenes. Ditto for John Boyega, Patton Oswalt, Karen GIllen, and Bill Paxton in his last movie roll (*sniff*).
Overall, this is a well acted movie with decent writing. Unfortunately, it feels like a movie that is missing something that must have been in the book. There are character beats that feel too abrupt, motivations that have to be guessed, and themes that feel nebulous. I’m pretty sure this is probably a good story if it was able to follow the book better. As it is, it feels like an incomplete story, lacking in drama and conflict.
Score: 78