The Circle (2017)

The Circle is the kind of near-future thriller that feels uncomfortably close to the world in your pocket, turning everyday convenience into a slow, tightening question about what privacy is worth. It has a sleek, corporate sheen and a steadily mounting sense of dread, and it’s often at its best when it lets the ideas breathe—how a culture of sharing can quietly become a culture of surveillance. Tom Hanks brings an easy authority that makes the company’s charm persuasive rather than cartoonish, which is exactly why the film’s warnings land. It’s not for everyone if you need airtight plotting or subtlety, but if you’re drawn to timely, thought-provoking sci-fi dramas that spark arguments on the drive home, it’s a watch that lingers.

The Circle is clearly aiming to be a slick, modern cautionary tale about Big Tech—privacy, surveillance, and the seduction of “sharing” everything—wrapped in a near-future thriller. The problem is it talks a bigger game than it plays: the characters are thinly sketched, the tension rarely tightens, and the themes feel more like bullet points than ideas the story truly wrestles with. If you’re expecting a sharp, escalating sci-fi thriller with moral complexity, you’ll likely find it tedious and oddly toothless. Still, the premise is timely and the cast brings some watchable moments, so it may work as a lightweight, conversation-starting drama rather than the gripping warning it wants to be.