While better known for his feature films, Steven Soderbergh occasionally plays around in series television as well, though his work in that medium has yet to break out to as much success. Based on the lack of buzz as the show just recently finished its six-episode run streaming on Max, it seems unlikely that the limited series thriller Full Circle will be remembered as one of Soderbergh’s signature projects.
In all fairness, Full Circle probably doesn’t deserve to rate among Soderbergh’s best. The show has a rocky start and I’m not certain it adds up to as much in the end as the producer/director may have hoped or intended. Yet despite having some reservations about it, I ultimately found the series interesting enough to be worth the manageable amount of time I invested in watching it.
| Title: | Full Circle |
| Season: | 1 |
| Number of Episodes: | 6 |
| Release Dates: | Jul. 13-27, 2023 |
| Watched On: | Max |
Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant star as Samantha and Derek Browne, a well-to-do Manhattan power couple who manage the business empire for Sam’s father, Jeff (Dennis Quaid), a popular celebrity chef. The Brownes live in an expensive condo surrounded by expensive art and expensive things, but their seemingly-perfect lives unravel quickly after returning from a fancy-dress event one night to receive a threatening phone call informing them that their teenage son, Jared (Ethan Stoddard), has been kidnapped and will be killed unless the parents pay a peculiarly-specific ransom amount of $314,159 dollars, with equally perplexing instructions for how to deliver it.
The kidnapping is not any random crime of opportunity. Although they don’t know it at first, the Brownes were specifically targeted by a local crime boss named Mrs. Mahabir (CCH Pounder), who holds a grudge against the family for reasons they are neither aware of nor can comprehend. Frankly, her reasons confound even Mahabir’s own closest associates, who carry out her orders with increasing frustration – and ineptitude, in many cases.
Despite the parents’ reluctance to contact the police or FBI (for fear the kidnappers will harm their boy), the situation comes to the attention of an ambitious U.S. Postal Inspector named Mel Harmony (Zazie Beetz) whose investigation into mail fraud from Guyana somehow ties into all these events. Working the case against the explicit orders of her dickish superior (Jim Gaffigan), the bull-headed Harmony will uncover a web of secrets connecting events in the present day to sins committed in the past, both at home and in Guyana.
The Full Circle miniseries was created and written by Ed Solomon, who’d collaborated with Soderbergh previously on the 2018 HBO series Mosaic and the 2021 theatrical feature No Sudden Move, neither of which were all that memorable. (Solomon is best known for the classic Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the first Men in Black movie, and the twisty thriller Now You See Me.) Unfortunately, the weakest aspect of Full Circle is its convoluted plot, which has too many characters intertwined in messy ways, working toward murky goals for purposes that never entirely make sense.
At no point is it ever clear why the U.S. Postal Inspection Service would have so much authority over a domestic kidnapping case only tenuously linked to alleged mail fraud committed decades earlier. Even as the finale episode rolls out all the big revelations about who did what to whom, when and why, I’ll be damned if I could keep track of it all, and I feel fairly confident that critical plot points hinging on one character being pressured to reveal old bank routing numbers are pure gibberish that wouldn’t actually accomplish anything.
Soderbergh directs all six episodes, as is his tendency, with a very cold, clinical aloofness that, when combined with the confusing plot, makes the show’s first episode very difficult to get into. To be honest, I considered giving up on it about halfway through the premiere. I didn’t understand what was going on and couldn’t find any characters to root for. However, the plot twist delivered at the end of that first hour is very compelling and adds a huge amount of moral complexity to the story that was enough to keep me interested. Subsequent episodes then built a great deal of tension and suspense to string me along.
The show has a great cast, all doing fine work. It was pretty amusing to watch Timothy Olyphant play an ineffectual yuppie douchebag on this show while simultaneously playing a badass U.S. Marshal in Hulu’s Justified: City Primeval – episodes of both airing back-and-forth within days of each other over three weeks. If anyone does, I suppose Zazie Beetz’s character serves as the hero of the story, yet her Inspector Harmony is a tremendous pain in the ass to everyone she deals with, isn’t particularly nice or generous to anyone in any degree, and has entirely selfish career advancement motives for everything she does. Harmony may not be a likeable character, but she is fascinating and well-played by the actress.
A storyline in the last couple episodes about a dumbass mobster is also hilarious.
Video Streaming
Max (formerly HBO Max) premiered Full Circle with two episodes on July 13th, followed by two additional episodes per week for a three-week (six-episode) run total. The show streams only in 1080p SDR, at least for the time being. The Max platform has a very frustrating habit of debuting shows initially in HD, only to quietly upgrade them to 4K some time later after all their viewers have already finished watching (e.g. Perry Mason, The White Lotus, And Just Like That…).
According to the episode credits, producer/director Soderbergh shot Full Circle with RED V-RAPTOR cameras that are capable of up to 8K resolution, so this seems like a missed opportunity. On the other hand, despite the camera specs, the entire series has the “shot on camcorder in dim lighting” aesthetic that Soderbergh has favored for most of his projects in recent years, which makes me question how much better it could really look, or was even meant to look.
The full-screen 16:9 image is acceptably sharp, considering that (as mentioned) most scenes were photographed in dim lighting, and with shaky handheld camerawork. Colors and contrast are a little flat, but it seems to be a very particular look that Soderbergh is going for. I’m not the biggest fan of the style, but I will say that the many nighttime exterior city scenes are quite evocative.
The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack has a rich musicality and a wide soundstage that effectively fills the room with a strong sense of atmosphere and immersiveness.
Related
- Steven Soderbergh (director)
- Ed Solomon (writer)
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