Steven Soderbergh has a new film available recently on HBO Max. It is called Kimi and stars Zoë Kravitz in the lead role, which is not Kimi.

As you discover quickly, Kimi is not a character’s name, but the name of a home assistant much like Alexa or Siri. Zoë Kravitz played Angela Childs, a tech worker who reviews data streams from the Kimi assistants, has been suffering from agoraphobia since she had been assaulted some time ago. When Angela found some disturbing information on one of the data streams, she tried to find the proper people to help her with it. The problem was that she was going to have to go out from her apartment, something that would be her greatest fear.

The film was set in Seattle during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that only added to the neuroses of Angela. A relationship with neighbor Terry (Byron Bowers) was stressed from her agoraphobia as well.

This was a lot of fun. I really liked the character of Angela because she was clearly smart and did not do dumb things just because the plot expected her to. In fact, she always seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of the people after her trying to keep what she found a secret.

Zoë Kravitz does a wonderful job showing the continuous issues and mental problems that Angela was having while still being totally competent and bright. Kravitz had to hit this out of the park for this film to work, and she does an admirable job of it.

The run time of the film was both a strength and a weakness for me. At just around 90+ minutes, Kimi is a quick and enjoyable watch. However, because the film is not that long, some scenes felt a bit rushed and packed in. Angela went from not being able to leave her place to running all around Seattle with minimum trouble. If the film was another 15-20 minutes, I think some of these character bits would work better and we would have more of a feel of Angela’s agoraphobia. It would feel like it was more of a challenge to overcome than just the minor inconvenience that you can get past with minimal effort.

Our antagonists are under written and a few more scenes would go a long way to helping flesh them out more.

Still, I enjoyed Kimi despite a few of the flaws of the picture. Angela Childs is an intelligent and kick ass female that does not take a backseat just because she has some weaknesses. She is no one’s victim, despite having faced such issues in her past. Zoë Kravitz is the star of every second of this film.

3.75 stars