Stanko's Stance

“An agoraphobic Seattle tech worker uncovers evidence of a crime.”

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: David Koepp
Starring: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Erika Christensen, India de Beaufort, Derek DelGaudio, Sarai Koo, Jaime Camil, Koya Harada, George Evans
Release Date: February 10, 2022
IMDB

Steven Soderbergh just keeps churning them out. The man does not take a year off, ever. The last time he didn’t have a movie released was in 2016, and the time before that was 1997. Soderbergh is a machine. Whether it be large or small scale, the man has a knack for making entertaining movies no matter what the circumstances.

Kimi (2022) follows Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz), a high strung, and anxious young woman working for a tech company. Angela works from home in tech support for a new up-and-coming company that mirrors Amazon and their real-life Alexa. In Soderbergh’s story, the smart home appliance is named Kimi, and it’s Angela’s job to listen to audio recordings when Kimi didn’t comply with the request as expected. Much of these fixes involve slang or abbreviations. However, there wouldn’t be much of a story if that’s all Kimi revolved around.

One day while Angela is running through her normal routines, she stumbles across a recording that sounds as if a woman is in trouble. Angela works the audio and uses some friends who know technology well to get a clean, crisp recording that all but eliminates doubt from the situation. After many phone calls and back-and-forth exchanges, Angela finally gets connected to someone who will take her worries seriously. 

What Angela doesn’t know is that this company is ready for a major move, and the young entrepreneurial mastermind is poised to make a shit ton of money. When this classic greedy businessman gets wind of what Angela is trying to make public, he must take drastic matters into his own hands.

Kimi flips on its head when Angela finally leaves the apartment. 

The extreme introvert is willing to face her greatest fear: interpersonal communication and the great outdoors. What Angela doesn’t expect, and could never expect, are hitmen. Professionals are sent to kill her and Angela finds herself in a fight for her life.

Kimi goes from a bubbleroom mystery to a full on conspiracy movie with foot chases and gun fights. It’s a huge swing, and Soderbergh knocks it out of the park. Kimi manages to harness the paranoia of a pandemic with over-the-top delusions of technological grandeur. Angela is the victim stuck in the middle of a world paused by fear and a company pushing the limit for greatness.

Kimi is a fun little watch. That word “little” may seem rude, but in all honesty, it’s a compliment to Soderbergh, Kravitz and everyone involved. Kimi does a lot with a little. The plot instead isn’t hard to follow. The character list is small, and each is identifiable with unique traits. David Koepp wrote a 90-minute movie that raises concerns about technology, companies running the technology, societal paranoia and effects of the mental effects of COVID-19 virus. He did the damn thing in an effective and entertaining way. Soderbergh took this screenplay and made it his own, using his simple fast-paced style to enhance the themes and entertainment value.

With a movie that’s filmed through a very narrow POV lens, you need your lead to carry the load. Zoë Kravitz brings her A-game, ensuring that Kimi is in great hands. Kravitz plays the paranoid loner very well, but she blends her confidence with headphones on with her frustration with everyday tasks remarkably well. Angela is not living alone hoping that she never has to see anyone. She has a crush on her neighbor Terry Hughes (Byron Bowers) and there are moments where you can see Angela successfully going with the flow. However, once the power is taken out of her hands, she has a very hard time coping.

Surely, we can all relate to that. Right? No, it’s just me? Okay.

Angela’s personality is that when she gets working on something, and becomes completely invested, she won’t be stopped. When she goes into her closet and pulls out additional audio hardware and Soderbergh uses closeups of XLR wires being plugged in….MMMMMM, I was clapping. It tickled me right in the proper spot. The quick punchy editing style matches the workmanship of Angela’s brain. She is processing faster than we can process, and the rapid build of her new apparatus now only shows us she is figuring it out, it also makes us feel how she is working on it.

 Kimi is also more proof that Kravitz can handle her own in an action movie. She has appeared in her fair share of action infused films like the Fantastic Beasts franchise, Kin (2018), and The Batman (2022). With Kimi coming out the same year as the shared adventure with the Caped Crusader, the world learned that  Kravitz can deal a mean heel kick and handle her own with a nail gun.

Are we leaving in peak Nail Gun as a weapon in movies? The Equalizer (2014) brought it back into the forefront, and still eight years later it’s being used as a final weapon in a final showdown. David Fincher used it in The Killer (2023), and I just watched Totally Killer (2023) which also utilized it. And now I am recalling Casino Royale (2006) which also uses it as a weapon.

I’ve reached a tangent point, so it’s time to collect myself.

Perhaps one hangup about Kimi is whether or not it has legs to be a recommendable movie in the future. The movie does not shy away from COVID-19 and the isolation that came with it. Soderbergh uses this as part of Angela’s anxiety, but he also utilizes it in the way the movie was made. Even if the movie wasn’t made with massive COVID restrictions, Kimi evokes a loneliness with the way Angela is shot in her (ridiculously nice) Seattle apartment.

The question is, will people enjoy experiencing this sort of isolation again? Perhaps that’s why Soderbegh and Koepp combined for a thrilling ending rather than a quiet isolated wrap-up? It’s something that I would like to ask Soderbergh and Koepp if I ever got to meet them. They may not care about the film’s longevity because it was made for a certain time. Kimi hits its target now, but will the distance between the viewer and the target grow too vast for true impact?

The beautiful thing is that Steven Soderbergh doesn’t seem to care too much about the larger impact. Kimi is a simple movie, but Soderbergh treats it as something serious worthy of craft. A simple premise doesn’t mean a simple execution. Kimi could ask all the largest questions and focus on the existential thoughts about technology overtaking us, and to be fair, it does skim along those surfaces. But Soderbergh keeps the movie grounded as a movie that relies on Angela, which makes her fight to survive at the end satisfying and effective.

Kimi is streaming on Max. It was an HBO Max original.

STANKO RATING: A-