Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

The Circle Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 24, 2017

In the Mail Order Wife Blu-ray review, I mentioned how memorable the late Glenne Headly was in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and how her passing, while not eliciting the same sort of global mourning other “higher profile” celebrity deaths have, was still a major loss. Headly is on hand, albeit kind of briefly, in The Circle, where she plays Bonnie, the mother of focal character Mae Holland (Emma Watson). Increasing the already melancholic aspect of the casting of this particular film, Mae’s father Vinnie is played by Bill Paxton, who died when the film was in post-production. The film bears a couple of credit remembrances of Paxton, but Headly’s demise evidently came too late to be officially recognized by the film itself. The Circle therefore stands as a kind of sad double epitaph for two esteemed performers, though it has to be admitted that neither is utilized very fully in this supposed thriller culled from a best selling novel by Dave Eggers (who co-adapted it for the film’s screenplay). Eggers also wrote the source novel which resulted in A Hologram for the King, and based on some comments included in a featurette offered a supplement on this new Blu-ray, the relationship forged between Eggers and Tom Hanks, who starred in that film and is featured in this one, helped to spark this particular cinematic adaptation. A Hologram for the King had a few kind of odd narrative hurdles to overcome, and some of those same obstacles are occasionally encountered in The Circle as well. The film would seem to be a potent reflection on the interconnectedness of modern life, with a subtext of incipient paranoia, but there’s surprisingly little angst either on the surface or roiling just beneath it, in a tale that follows Mae getting her dream job at the titular high tech enterprise whose actual products are never really completely detailed. The Circle has some interesting things to say about internet life, and corollary aspects like social media, but it’s a weirdly lifeless “thriller” that frankly never really thrills all that much.

There’s a bizarre disconnect in internet behavior that those of us who work for internet based companies have long experienced. On the one hand, everyone is obviously connected in one way or the other, and those connections in and of themselves forge an interesting, and in some cases incredibly beneficial and commendable, community. On the other hand, this very “community” is often comprised of folks sitting alone in their offices, tipping tapping away in supposed anonymity, especially if they hide behind screen names and proxy servers. Internet trolling has therefore become something of a modern day Art, resulting in endless slings and arrows being thrown back and forth between people who don’t seem to remember that old maxim about everyone having an opinion in the same manner that everyone has another shared physical attribute. Kind of interestingly, The Circle addresses trolling in a roundabout manner, after Mae has gone to work in the Customer Service department of the focal company and is slowly but surely sucked into the social aspect of an institution built upon the very (ether-eal?) community that is part and parcel of an internet connected lifestyle.

The Circle is oddly disjointed at times in how it trots out its various plot devices. There’s a gaping hole at the center of the story, though, since Mae’s “customer service” work is basically presented in montage form, essentially focusing on an all important “feedback” score she gets from the company’s consumers, while what exact kind of “service” she’s offering is never really explained. Meanwhile, the company’s entrepreneur, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), does get into at least some specifics with one of The Circle’s latest gadgets, a tiny camera that he’s already positioned all around the world and which Bailey insists will be a major ally in the fight against tyranny, since nothing can be hidden anymore. Interestingly, Hanks makes a statement in the accompanying featurette that there was some concern that by the time The Circle hit the screen its technologies would already seem “quaint”, and one has to wonder about this mini-camera plot point, since the globe is already covered with surveillance cameras, especially in the wake of some terrorism incidents.

Once Mae is ensconced at The Circle and various nefarious activities start accruing, I kept waiting for the film to kick into something akin to The Parallax View levels of anxiety and paranoia, but the film marginalizes any suspense in needless sidebars like Vinnie's multiple sclerosis. Even the film's central vignette involving trolling taken to extremes involves Mae's childhood friend and prospective beau Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) hinges on him making chandeliers out of antlers, something that may invite some eye rolling and maybe even a bit of unintended laughter. That leaves all sorts of other sidebars, including a political element that involves a character played by Patton Oswalt, drifting through the story kind of like Mae herself when she's out kayaking (another kind of odd "character beat" that plays out in a too convenient manner).

The kind of frustrating thing about The Circle is that it is positively rife with material that almost begs for development and contextualization, and which, despite fears offered by Hanks in the supplementary featurettes, does in fact have great and probably even enduring relevance to our modern day world. What is the trade off between “transparency” (as it’s labeled in the film) and privacy? It’s a question that is often bandied about in terms of things like the Patriot Act, but which in this film has the potential at least of being a much more intimate, personalized affair. Unfortunately The Circle, kind of like its very title, wanders around pretzel like without ever really getting anywhere.

The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Circle is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The IMDb lists native 5K and 6K digital captures courtesy of Red Cameras, finished at a 4K DI, which may help to account for the film's generally very high levels of sharpness and detail. Commendably for a thriller, there's a refreshing absence of aggressive grading going on, though a mid-film sequence getting Mae and a cohort into the veritable catacombs of The Circle features green and then blue regimens that offer one of the few examples where this presentation's fine detail levels fall, albeit slightly even then. The bulk of the film has a nice and naturalistic palette that never looks boosted and may therefore may strike some as lacking traditional "pop". The film does exploit the trendy aspect of onscreen verbiage to indicate things like text messages, as can be seen in a couple of the screenshots included in this review, and once the surveillance aspects of the plot start taking over, there are a number of POV shots from various cameras (also seen in a couple of the screenshots accompanying this review).

The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Circle's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track has moments of nicely effective immersion, courtesy of both crowd scenes at The Circle, as well as some of the outdoor material like Mae's kayaking adventures, but this is a somewhat less showy track than tends to be the case with techno-thrillers. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly and is typically very well prioritized. Fidelity is fine throughout and there are no problems with dropouts or distortion.

The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• No More Secrets: Completing The Circle (1080p; 30:56) is an above average set of four featurettes documenting the film's production.


• The Future Won't Wait: Design and Technology (1080p; 10:55) is an interesting piece touching on production design.


• A True Original: Remembering Bill Paxton (1080p; 13:53) is a sweet homage with some heartfelt comments from Tom Hanks.

The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Circle may make it into the trivia books as the final film of both Bill Paxton and Glenne Headly, but the kind of sad fact is that both of these esteemed performers aren't utilized very much in the film, and the film itself never resonates the way its prescient subject matter would seem to suggest. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.