Kimi

This crime thriller set in the Seattle tech world has all the stylistic hallmarks you'd expect from acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh. Kimi looks great with cool warehouse apartments, a contemporary plot line about the technology we bring into our own homes, and a murder mystery. And yet the film fails to gel, feeling every much a sum of two parts. The first half builds on an interesting premise. Kravitz's Angela, a voice stream interpreter -- think the person who ensures Alexa understand's your every command -- suffers with agoraphobia, with her anxieties being heightened by COVID. While doing all she can to avoid leaving her apartment, she uncovers what she believes to be a sexual assault.

Comparisons to Rear Window are clear to see and Angela is both interesting and unusual enough to maintain our attention. However, when it kicks into its second half and becomes a game of cat and mouse -- a bunch of heavies are sent to retrieve key evidence from Angela -- the film's poor script and substandard supporting actors fail to keep up. As for Angela, the characteristics that initially made her an interesting character become sidelined. By the final shot, her mental health issues, which were such an integral part of her character, have seemingly disappeared completely without any real explanation. Throw in a character who by all accounts is a stalker then becoming the hero and any of the film's initial slickness ends up in one icky mess. Kimi looks and sounds like a big budget release -- great cinematography, awesome soundtrack -- but feels very much like a straight to TV movie.