Review: KIMI

Image courtesy of HBO Max.

Director Steven Soderbergh has been on a bit of a tear recently. His "Let Them All Talk" was an acting showcase for a great cast and last year's "No Sudden Move," a crime drama period piece with a little more than thrills up its sleeve, was his best in, perhaps, two decades. He's back already with another film, "KIMI," and it's the type of slow burn thriller that takes a little while - but at 86 minutes, not too long - to get where it's going, but pays off in a really entertaining way.

In terms of plot, it's somewhat simplistic, although I'm not exactly sure I can explain the various technological aspects of it. An agoraphobic young woman living in Seattle named Angela (Zoe Kravitz, very good) spends her days in front of a computer screen filtering through what could best be described as "errors in communication" for a tech company with a revolutionary product known as KIMI, which is essentially a voice-activated device that can do everything for you involving anything that can be controlled technologically.

From brief glimpses of her day-to-day existence, we know that Angela's mother (Robin Givens) wants her daughter to do more with her life (preferably outside of her apartment, which she has left infrequently; first, due to an "incident" that traumatized her, and then second because of COVID-19). Her shrink believes that she's slinking away from facing her problems, while her dentist is frustrated that she won't leave the house to have an abscessed tooth dealt with. She has somewhat of a fling going on with a guy (Byron Bowers) who lives in a building across the street, but they only see each other when he comes to her apartment.

While filtering through files one day, Angela stumbles upon what appears to be an audio clip of a woman accusing a man of rape, and him making threats toward her. She does some research with the aid of a Romanian computer whiz - in the film's one slightly unbelievable turn of plot - and discovers that the man involved in the audio had the woman killed by a pair of for-hire assassins.

As it turns out - and I don't believe this constitutes a spoiler warning - the man plays somewhat of a role in Angela's existence, and her attempts to bring this fact to the attention of a higher-up at the company where she works named Chowdury (Rita Wilson) has some frightening consequences.

As I'd mentioned, the film is a slow burn thriller. It's not until about a third of the film's short running time has passed that we get to the instigating incident that sets everything in motion. From there, it moves at a leisurely pace before becoming a fast-paced nail biter in the final third. There's some foreshadowing early in the picture when Angela has a conversation - on the phone, of course - with a guy who's renovating the apartment above her as to where Angela might turn in a pinch when being pursued by some corporate villains. All I can say is, the finale has some real payoff.

For a while, Soderbergh played the Hollywood game and made some big budget studio films that drew acclaim and made some money - most notably, his "Ocean's 11" series. But at heart, he's a director who likes to experiment. In recent years, he has made comedies ("Magic Mike"), heist films ("Logan Lucky") and horror movies ("Unsane") that include typical elements of their genre, while also giving them a spin that sets them apart from the expectations one might have for those genres. Some of his best films - "Traffic," "Out of Sight" and "No Sudden Move" especially - involve crime stories. "KIMI" involves a number of the various elements one might find in a Soderbergh film.

After an announced retirement from film some years back, Soderbergh returned and he's been cranking out films with a vengeance - although most of them have been on streaming platforms. His recent work has been of especially high quality. 

"KIMI" likely has something to say about corporate greed and the dangers of technology that can spy on you, but here they mostly play second fiddle to a Hitchcockian story of an ordinary - or, in this case, eccentric - character who has stumbled upon a conspiracy. And that's perfectly fine because the film is a lean, mean and very effective thriller.