While it is not the best movie you will see in the theater this year, The Circle makes a pleasant enough afternoon's diversion. The movie follows Emma Watson as Mae Holland, a young woman who gets a job as a customer service rep at the titular Circle, a seeming progressive tech company that if you have seen the trailer you know turns out to have a sinister side.
The film has clearly been edited to remove the darker elements of the book it is based on but that inadvertently proves a strength. The villains are no longer out to take over the world but are now simply corporate suits willfully ignoring the downsides of their new technology in their bid for corporate power. They are friendly faces, perfectly portrayed by Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt, whose pasted-on affability never wavers even when they are doing demonstrably immoral things. They're not monsters, they're just businessmen.
My major complaint with this movie is that Mae's old friend, Mercer, played by Ellar Coltrane seems superfluous. He's just not as good an actor as the rest of the cast and he comes off as a creepy stalker in this interactions with Mae. I know that he is an important character in the book but the conflict he presents, forcing Mae to choose between the Circle and her friends, could have been given to Karen Gillan as Mae's other friend Annie.
As a result, Gillan's character is not given much to do other than a subplot that seems a bit rushed. Also underutilized is John Boyega's potential love interest character. However, despite this, the Circle is an intriguing look at how in business, ruthless acts hide behind a kind smile.
The film has clearly been edited to remove the darker elements of the book it is based on but that inadvertently proves a strength. The villains are no longer out to take over the world but are now simply corporate suits willfully ignoring the downsides of their new technology in their bid for corporate power. They are friendly faces, perfectly portrayed by Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt, whose pasted-on affability never wavers even when they are doing demonstrably immoral things. They're not monsters, they're just businessmen.
My major complaint with this movie is that Mae's old friend, Mercer, played by Ellar Coltrane seems superfluous. He's just not as good an actor as the rest of the cast and he comes off as a creepy stalker in this interactions with Mae. I know that he is an important character in the book but the conflict he presents, forcing Mae to choose between the Circle and her friends, could have been given to Karen Gillan as Mae's other friend Annie.
As a result, Gillan's character is not given much to do other than a subplot that seems a bit rushed. Also underutilized is John Boyega's potential love interest character. However, despite this, the Circle is an intriguing look at how in business, ruthless acts hide behind a kind smile.