***½/****
starring Zoë Kravitz, Rita Wilson, Derek DelGaudio, Robin Givens
written by David Koepp
directed by Steven Soderbergh
by Walter Chaw Steven Soderbergh's Kimi is an escapist paranoia fantasy that has as its most unlikely conceit not any of its dire depictions of a techno-surveillance state, but that it's possible for wealthy white men to see anything like consequences for their actions--actions up to, and including, murder. It may be Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp's cleverest sting in a clever film, this notion that at a time when satire feels impossible because reality is so obscene, the greatest stretch of the imagination is the promise of meaningful accountability for the 1%. You could call it Pollyannaism or toxic positivity (and I confess my first response to how this movie ends was irritation), but I've come to realize how that speaks more to my disappointment with the world than with the story Kimi is trying to tell. This isn't Night Moves or The Parallax View (or, more to the point, The Conversation or Blow Out), it's a fable about how trauma can be overcome, justice can be won, and the bad guys don't necessarily have to win every time. It could even be about how the future is minority and female and work-from-home. Or, thanks to one superb sequence, Kimi could be about a rejection of our desperate longing for superhuman intervention. Maybe it's each of those things at once. All a revolution takes is enough individuals, flawed as they are, broken as they may be, deciding they're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. All it would take is cutting through the noise and the moral cannibalism and finally painting a target on our common tormentors.