Review of The Circle (2017) by Kaptenvideo — 24 May 2017

Oh look, here's the movie that everyone loves to hate in Spring 2017! It's the critically reviled techno thriller which is played out as George Orwell flavored near future sci-fi, only everything in is already real. More or less.

A girl (Emma Watson of „Harry Potter“ movies) working at one of the world’s largest tech / social media companies discovers that modern technology is only as cool as the people who own it. Turns out, free lunches are not that free after all.

„The Circle“ can be called an insightful look about perils of our digital life, or „a paranoid thriller without suspense, urgency or a single new thing to say“, as Rolling Stone has delightfully put it.

Many gravitate towards the latter. Me, I am more generous here. I'd call it a fully functional movie, just not a very gripping one.

The main problem may be that if you know about the digital life and it’s shadow side, „The Circle“ only recapitulates the often heard bullet points and adds nothing new. And if you don’t know or care, then nobody offers convincing arguments to invest yourself in it either.

The result in its one-note-ness and unelegant-ness resembles some popular teen drama: you can watch it and don’t have to feel bored exactly, but you'll never mistake it for really good stuff. In the age of quality TV series, „The Circle“ can’t help but feel anachronistic, although its topics are thoroughly modern.

Emma Watson is a bit too charmless to carry the result alone but her more intriguing co-stars (Bill Paxton in his final movie role, Tom Hanks as the founder of the company, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headley) are sadly delegated to sidelines and can’t really help carry the weight.

All in all, I gotta say, the reputation of „The Circle“ is worse than the movie itself. Sure, it’s not great, and would probably work better as an episode in anthology such as „Black Mirror“.

But there’s nothing really wrong with it either. It’s a serviceable thriller for educating youngsters and effective cautionary tale about modern digital life.