Review of The Circle (2017) by Calvin C — 31 Jul 2017

THE CIRCLE is about a company who uses technology to eventually follow someone's life 24/7. In this age of people recording everything they do in their life for all the world to see, this movie should have had a good message. But it squanders that opportunity with a stupid story, characters with no redeeming qualities and a dumb ending. Emma Watson is an okay actress. You take her out of the Harry Potter films and all her roles since then have been just okay. Even in the year's biggest movie Beauty and the Beast, she was the weakest part of that movie. She is better in a supporting role or ensemble, so for her to be asked to carry this film was questionable. Tom Hanks has a small role as the founder of the company and not even he could save this film. The choices Watson's character makes during this movie infuriated me. I couldn't relate to her and it was difficult to empathize with her. She actually got worse as the movie went on. The death of one of the characters felt forced and was only there to get to the ending. This could have been a person fighting the system, but in the end, the main character joins the system even though they know it is bad. No lessons are learned and we as an audience feel dumber for it. It is advertised as a hi-tech thriller, but there was nothing hi-tech or thrilling about this movie. Too bad this was Bill Paxton's last movie. He deserved better.

GRADE: D.