The terrifically efficient and just plain terrific Steven Soderbergh thriller “Kimi” has been streaming for two weeks now, ever since sneaking onto HBO Max with a lack of fanfare bordering on undercover espionage.
Having seen it twice now — no chore, believe me — its bracing COVID-19-era anxieties amid familiar Hollywood blueprints strike me as a template of its own, to be used by filmmakers of the future. Audiences of the present, meantime, don’t need to know how to read a blueprint. They need only enjoy the steady pull and the satisfactions offered by an unassumingly confident genre picture of serious distinction.
For starters “Kimi” really does look, feel, play and deliver like a tightly sprung movie conceived with a big screen’s spatial possibilities in mind. Ever since he threatened retirement a few years ago, Soderbergh’s breathless low-budget productivity has been astonishing, and nearly all the results have been worthwhile, though some felt like more like time killed, however proficiently, rather than time filled, imaginatively. His previous project was the tasty if narratively tangled “No Sudden Move,” also shot mid-pandemic.
