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Kimi -- a review

Zoë Kravitz, the future Catwoman, stars in Kimi, director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film. Kravitz plays an agoraphobic young woman who’s living through the pandemic in Seattle. She works for a tech company, fixing “bugs” that pop up in the code of Kimi, an Alexa-like computer assistant. Whenever Kimi mishears someone asking for something, or does something in error, it’s up to Kravitz’s character, Angela Childs, to make a note of what went wrong and how to fix it. This is a well-paying tech job that Angela does in her spacious, luxury apartment and she’s as happy as a clam.

That is, until Angela hears something on a particular audio file, where Kimi was accidentally switched on while people were having a severe argument in the background. But as Angela cleans up the audio, she discovers to her horror that what initially sounded like an argument turns out to be a murder that Kimi had innocently recorded.

Clocking in at just 90 minutes, Kimi is a lean, mean crime thriller that’s a really nice blend of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Soderbergh expertly ratchets up the tension as the film goes on, while doing something completely unexpected and refreshing: he humanizes everybody, including the villains, who mostly turn out to be just bored worker drones in their own way--and thus it’s even more fun to see their arrogant expectations get subverted by this meek woman whom they expected to be just another easy target.

And Zoë Kravitz is not only good, she’s wonderful here. She effortlessly carries the whole movie on her slender shoulders. Kravitz takes the character arc that she’s given--going from a mousey woman afraid of leaving her apartment, to becoming an outright warrior fighting for her life--and ably runs with it, and it’s a sheer joy to watch. I knew Zoë Kravitz was more than capable to be the new Catwoman in The Batman. But if you still need proof, just watch Kimi; her superb performance here easily shows that she can handle anything that Gotham City can throw at her. --SF

Kimi is available on HBO-Max.
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