Is Steven Soderbergh only making movies for HBO Max now? Kimi is his third such effort in a row that I am aware of, following Let Them All Talk and No Sudden Move. Then again, it does appear his two movies before that went directly to Netflix, but Soderbergh has always been a somewhat unique filmmaker that seems to be doing his own thing anyway. I mean, I think he shot a whole horror movie on an iPhone not that long ago.
For Kimi, he’s back to a fairly standard thriller focusing on technology, COVID, and how one woman might not be able to deal with all that very well.
The movie opens with an explanation of what KIMI is: it’s the latest in digital home assistants, but as the company’s CEO Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio) explains, what sets KIMI apart from the likes of Siri and Alexa is that when KIMI misunderstands a request, a human operator will then listen to the request and correct the problem so KIMI will get it right in the future. One such reviewer is Angela (Zoe Kravitz), a woman suffering from agoraphobia that predates the COVID pandemic and who is having more problems than most people as a result. She can’t quite get herself to leave the house, even to go out to the street to order breakfast from a food truck on the curb with a neighborhood lawyer (Byron Bowers) she has a relationship with. She is more than willing to let him come over for a booty call, but she doesn’t want to actually go anywhere herself if she can help it, and she will go to extreme lengths to stay put.
Then, during a routine correction to someone’s KIMI, Angela overhears what sounds like a violent crime, most likely the murder of a woman on the other end of the line. Angela feels she needs to report this to somebody, but there’s no procedure for this sort of thing, and she isn’t even sure who or where this happened. To get to the bottom of all this, she’ll have to do something she can’t bring herself to do under almost any other circumstances: she’ll have to leave her apartment. And to make matters worse, it appears forces within the company she’s working for may be working to cover up the crime, and that may mean dealing with her in a more final way.
After the all-star cast that was No Sudden Move, Kimi is a much smaller movie for Soderbergh, one that is entirely dependent on Kravitz, her hair died a bright blue, to carry. She does an admirable job, and Soderbergh is an old pro by now, throwing out all the stops to depict how harrowing it is for Angela to go out not only during the COVID pandemic but also a protest against a city policy to move the homeless. As such, mass transit may be just as terrifying for Angela as any murderous goons chasing her in the street.
Ultimately, this feels like a small movie. Yes, the big players include a tech CEO, but it’s mostly just Angela on her own, trying to find the strength to get through a bad situation when she went outside for the first time in who knows how long. I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking since the “one person against a powerful, unknown enemy” is hardly new, even with the COVID angle, but Soderbergh does know how to put together a fun flick of this type. Running only about a hour and a half, it’s a brisk movie that gets to the point and tells an entertaining story with a strong performance at the center. Sometimes, that’s enough.
Grade: B-
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